Life Sciences

The key to understanding the interplay between cancer and the immune system is quantifying the spatial biology and co-expression patterns of critical cell types. We used lessons from astronomy (Sloan Digital Sky Survey) to efficiently map tumor pathology tissues with high-fidelity, single-cell resolution using multispectral microscopy. The resultant AstroPath platform…

Protein Analytics: To understand how a biological system works, monitor the structures of the thousands of proteins within it. My laboratory has developed a technology that generates a new type of molecular data with which we can look at the structures (or shapes) of the proteins in living systems. We…

I have been developing a self-regenerating system of symbiotic microbe-based malaria control. My team recently demonstrated that a Microsporidian symbiont completely blocks the transmission of the malaria parasite by Anopheles mosquitoes. This symbiotic microbe can be disseminated through insect populations and by virtue of sexual and vertical transmission (mother to…

How the use of optogenetics can restore vision to the visually impaired Seeing is not, as the proverb goes, merely believing, rather it is a literal window to the world. Losing our eye-sight means a major loss of personal freedom and, in most cases, implies an irreversible condition. While there…

Over the last year, Patrick Cramer and his team visualized how the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 replicates its RNA genome. Their work revealed the mechanism of the drug remdesivir and enables the development of new antivirals. Cramer is a world leader in the fields of gene transcription and structural biology. Over the…

There is currently no known drug treatment for preventing the onset or progression of diabetes mellitus. However, with my team, we have recently discovered a new potential drug receptor, the insulin inhibitory receptor, a breakthrough with the potential to revolutionize diabetes mellitus care. The discovery promises new, clinically-relevant treatments to…

Professor Kevan Shokat at UCSF has achieved a breakthrough in cancer drug discovery.  The protein K-Ras has been described as “undruggable” for almost 40 years since its discovery as the first human oncogene in 1982.  There has been a worldwide hunt for a drug to inhibit its role in cancer,…

We have developed a novel therapeutic for SARS-CoV-2 that relies on nanobodies – antibody fragments from alpacas and llamas. Combining protein engineering, structural biology, and virology, we found that multi-component molecules binding the virus on two surfaces lead to robust neutralization of wildtype virus and newly emerging variants. Unlike most…

Our new detector records the full position-momentum phase space for all electrons scattered through a sample, and ptychographic reconstruction algorithms solve the samples atomic structure. Our algorithms inversely solve for the multiple scattering of the electron beam and overcome the lens aberrations. For the first time, the resolution is set…

CRISPR-Cas9 is best known for genome editing, yet it derives from immune systems in bacteria. We discovered that the RNAs that guide DNA cutting by Cas9 can come from other RNAs in the cell. We learned how to dictate which RNAs become guide RNAs, thereby allowing us to connect an…

The nominating institution FMP on the breakthrough: Christian Hackenberger has pioneered contributions to the development of protein-based therapeutics, based on the chemical modification and cellular delivery of antibodies to target cancer and viral infections. Highlights include the engineering of an inhibitor against human and avian influenza, and safer next-gen antibody…

The nominating institute Technische Universität Braunschweig on the project: Vaccines cannot cure COVID-19. We need an additional medication to cure the infected, and protect the risk populations that are expected to respond to vaccination with success rates far below 100%. This can be achieved by using human antibodies, exactly the…

The nominating institution Weizmann Institute of Science on the breakthrough: ALS is an incurable and fatal disease. A recent landmark study has identified a bioactive gut microbiome commensal and secreted product (nicotinamide) as disease modifying in ALS-prone mice. Importantly, human patients featured similar microbial and CNS metabolite alterations. This work provides…

The nominating institution UCSD on the breakthrough: Neurons are progressively dysfunctional in neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, for which symptoms may take years to appear. Xiang-Dong Fu has discovered a new strategy to convert astrocytes into functional neurons, and rebuild lost neural circuits. This may lead to disease reversal.…

The nominating institution Stanford on the project: Studying gliomas is revolutionizing our understanding of how these terrible tumors hijack neuronal circuits and, fueled by the brain’s own neural activity, grow and invade. By uncovering this dependence of brain cancers on normal brain signals, our work is having a major impact…

The nominating institution TUM on the project: Novel anti-bacterial drugs are needed to treat multiresistant pathogens. Our research focuses on expanding the scope via compounds with novel mechanisms of action. A major breakthrough represents the discovery of a new type of antibiotic overcoming several previous limitations. The molecule addresses unprecedented…

The nominating institution Karlsruhe Institute of Technology on the breakthrough: Puchta is a pioneer who demonstrates that CRISPR/Cas as a site-specific nuclease can be used for restructuring complete plant chromosomes. He elucidated major mechanisms of DNA double strand break repair, and he is one of the leading scientists adopting this…

The nominating institution SLAC Stanford on the breakthrough: A critical challenge in understanding function in the human brain is lack of access to human brain tissue for investigation by imaging, recording, and stimulation. We developed innovative technologies that allow us to instruct stem cells to become 3D cellular structures resembling…