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Sir David Weatherall wins top US medical prize

22 September 2010

Sir David Weatherall of Oxford University has been awarded a Lasker Award, the most significant US prize for medical research with many past award winners subsequently going on to receive Nobel prizes. He is the only person outside America to win the award this year.

The $250,000 prize recognises his research on genetic diseases of the blood and his leadership in improving clinical care for thousands of children with thalassaemia throughout the developing world.

The 2010 Lasker~Koshland Special Achievement Award will be presented to Sir David for '50 years of international statesmanship in biomedical science', the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation has announced.

Sir David's research over the last 50 years has greatly advanced our understanding of thalassaemia, a set of inherited blood disorders that affect the body's ability to create red blood cells and can lead to anaemia of different severities. As well as using a range of approaches to determine the molecular and genetic causes of thalassaemia, he has been able to improve clinical treatment of the disease and change its care for the better worldwide, particularly in the developing world.

'It's a tremendous honour to be given this award,' said Sir David Weatherall, emeritus professor of medicine at the University of Oxford. 'It's both a surprise and a delight to have my work and my career recognised in this way. It's also a tribute to all my colleagues - researchers, doctors and healthcare professionals - who have contributed so much to this work.'

Professor Weatherall has long been an important figure in Oxford medicine. With the vast majority of thalassaemia cases occurring in the developing world, as early as the 1970s Sir David focused on building research partnerships and capacity in these areas - long before global health issues became a priority more widely.

Oxford University now has a network of long-standing clinical research units in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Kenya funded by the Wellcome Trust, and a Medical Research Council unit in The Gambia. These units, and their partnerships with local doctors and researchers, are key to the University's strengths in combating infectious disease. Oxford is just about the only academic institution in the world with this research reach and is recognised as a world leader in global health.

Sir David established an Institute of Molecular Medicine at Oxford University in 1989, which was renamed the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine when he retired in 2000. The Institute's 400 scientists work on areas of molecular and cell biology that can improve our understanding and treatment of diseases ranging from cancer to HIV/AIDS.

Professor Alastair Buchan, head of the medical sciences division at Oxford University, said: 'The Lasker Award is of the very highest order and there could not be a more deserving recipient than Professor Sir David Weatherall. His outstanding research achievements have greatly improved the treatment of thalassaemia. He has relentlessly championed the need to tackle the most pressing global health issues which affect many of the poorest people in the world, and he has worked indefatigably to provide the infrastructure necessary to carry out the best research to understand disease and improve human health.

'Another enduring contribution is the legacy of his inspiring mentorship. In the same month in which David receives the Lasker Award, three of those he has mentored will be honoured: Professors Peter Ratcliffe and Nick White will receive Gairdner Awards in Toronto and his successor as Regius Professor, Sir John Bell, will give the Harveian Oration at the Royal College of Physicians. The Medical Sciences Division at Oxford will be proud to celebrate all these achievements.'

It might all have been quite different, as Professor Weatherall received a certain lack of support at the beginning of his career. 'I was almost court-martialled for my first paper on a Nepalese patient that I studied during a stint in the British Army in the late-1950s,' he recounts. 'This was because military commanders had not given me permission to publish. A senior officer also disapproved of me broadcasting the fact that one of its regiments had "bad genes" within it.'

The Lasker Awards, established in 1945, have recognized the contributions of scientists, physicians, and public servants across the world that have made major advances in the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, cure, and prevention of human disease. 76 winners of Lasker awards have received the Nobel Prize, including 28 in the last two decades.

'The 2010 Lasker Awards dramatically illustrate how the connection between innovative genetic and molecular research fosters bold advances that improve the health of people globally,' said Maria Freire, President of the Lasker Foundation. 'It's with great pride that the Lasker Foundation marks its 65th anniversary by recognizing these four Laureates whose courage and dedication exemplify all that our organization seeks to honour. They unlocked medical mysteries that are leading to successful new treatments for some of the world's most perplexing diseases.

'In granting these awards, the Lasker Foundation honours those who were willing to defy conventional wisdom and blaze new trails of inquiry that led to a startling new treatment for blindness, a solid understanding of the genetic causes underlying obesity and profound advances in clinical care for blood disorders that afflict children throughout the world's poorest countries,' said Joseph L. Goldstein, Chair of the Lasker Medical Research Awards Jury.

Sir David will receive his award at a ceremony on Friday 1 October at the Pierre Hotel in New York City.

For more information please contact the University of Oxford press office on 01865 280530 or press.office@admin.ox.ac.uk

Notes to Editors:

  • Sir David is one of four Lasker award winners for 2010. The Lasker Foundation is also presenting prizes to Douglas Coleman and Jeffrey Friedman for discovering leptin, a hormone that regulates appetite and body weight, a finding that firmly established the tie between obesity and genetics, and to Napoleone Ferrara for the discovery of Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF), a key to blood-vessel formation, which led to his creation of a treatment that restores sight to people blinded by the effects of wet age-related macular degeneration.
  • David Weatherall was born in 1933 and qualified in medicine at Liverpool University in 1956. Following periods in Liverpool, Baltimore and Oxford, he became Emeritus Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford in September 2000 upon retirement. He has received a number of national and international awards and is a Fellow of the Royal Society and an overseas member of the US National Academy of Sciences.
  • The thalassaemias are a group of inherited blood disorders that affect the body's ability to create red blood cells and can lead to mild or severe anaemia. They are the most common disorders involving changes in a single gene, and are caused by alterations in the genes that make haemoglobin. Most cases are found in people of South Asian, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern ancestry. Treatments have improved greatly in recent years, and include blood transfusions and iron chelation therapy. People who have moderate or severe thalassaemias are now living longer and have better quality of life. 
  • In 1965, David Weatherall was able to show that thalassaemia was caused by defects in the protein chains that make up haemoglobin in the body's red blood cells. He came up with prenatal tests in the 1970s for beta-thalassaemias. As DNA analysis emerged, Professor Weatherall adapted these techniques in 1982 for use earlier in pregnancy - an approach that is now employed worldwide.

    Sir David improved therapies for children with thalassaemia, coming up with more practical chelation therapies to remove the iron that builds up in the body through repeated blood transfusions. He also confirmed that the high prevalence of alpha-thalassaemia has remained in the gene pool because the trait protects people against a severe form of malaria.
  • Oxford University's Medical Sciences Division is one of the largest biomedical research centres in Europe. It represents almost one-third of Oxford University's income and expenditure, and two-thirds of its external research income. Oxford's world-renowned global health programme is a leader in the fight against infectious diseases (such as malaria, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and avian flu) and other prevalent diseases (such as cancer, stroke, heart disease and diabetes). Key to its success is a long-standing network of dedicated Wellcome Trust-funded research units in Asia (Thailand, Laos and Vietnam) and Kenya, and work at the MRC Unit in The Gambia. Long-term studies of patients around the world are supported by basic science at Oxford and have led to many exciting developments, including potential vaccines for tuberculosis, malaria and HIV, which are in clinical trials.
  • The Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation fosters the prevention and treatment of disease and disabilities by honoring excellence in basic and clinical science by educating the public and by advocating for support of medical research. Founded in 1942, the Lasker Foundation presents the prestigious Lasker Awards, which recognize the world's leaders in basic and clinical medical research, and individuals with outstanding public service. For much of the 20th Century, the Foundation was led by Mary Lasker, who was America's most prominent citizen-activist for public investment in medical research. She is widely credited with motivating the White House and the Congress to greatly expand federal funding for medical research, particularly through the National Institutes of Health.
  • The Lasker Awards are among the most respected science prizes in the world.  Recipients of the Lasker Medical Research Awards are selected by a distinguished international jury chaired by Joseph L. Goldstein, recipient of the 1985 Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and the Nobel Prize in Medicine.  Lasker Laureates receive a citation highlighting their achievements and an inscribed statuette of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, the Lasker Foundation's traditional symbol representing humanity's victory over disease, disability, and death. Seventy-nine Lasker Laureates have received the Nobel Prize, including 30 in the last two decades. More details on the 2010 Lasker Award recipients, the full citations for each award category, video interviews and photos of the awardees and additional information on the foundation are available at www.laskerfoundation.org. 

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