A summer job in the Minnesota laboratory of cell biologist Joseph Gall rerouted 2006 Gairdner Award winner Joan Steitz from medical school to the lab.

After that fateful summer, Steitz decided to forgo her acceptance into Harvard University's medical school and, at Gall's urging, took a spot instead in Harvard's graduate program in biochemistry and molecular biology. She never looked back.

"All of a sudden I got completely turned on," she told the Star in an April interview. "It really,…

Read More »

Few people have made as many breakthroughs in molecular genetics as Ronald Evans.

The professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., will accept a 2006 Gairdner Award in medicine today for the co-discovery and subsequent work on a super family of hormone receptors that regulate gene expression by acting as on-off switches.

"The switch is something like molecular software for the hardware of the genome. It activates genetic programs."

By activating these…

Read More »

The Gairdner Awards, handed out every year in Toronto, have become one of the top medical awards in the world since their inception in 1957.

Founded by Toronto businessman James Gairdner, the international awards recognize from three to six scientists each year for their outstanding research in medical science. Gairdner, who had a long-time interest in clinical medicine, created the foundation to recognize scientists' work with a tangible award.

This year's recipients will each receive…

Read More »

In the late 1970s, the University of Manitoba's Dr. Allan Ronald unwittingly became an expert in a sexually transmitted disease rarely seen outside of the developing world.

Chancroid is a bacterial infection characterized by painful genital ulcers. Ronald immersed himself in the science of the disease that had infected a string of men in Winnipeg, most likely from a local prostitute who had sexual relations with someone from India or Africa.

Ronald's investigations led him to Nairobi,…

Read More »

Like the bones beneath your skin, the skeleton of a cell gives strength and rigidity to the tiny structures that make up your body.

More important, these "cytoskeleton" structures give the cells their infinitely variable shapes.

And the shape of a cell largely dictates its function.

Understanding the way these cytoskeletons shift their shapes and help cells migrate around the body landed scientists Alan Hall and Dr. Thomas Pollard a pair of prestigious Gairdner Awards for 2006.

"The biggest…

Read More »

Growing up on a small farm in New Jersey, Dr. Ralph Brinster's interest in animals started early. As a teenager, he ran a small poultry business that helped pay for his post-secondary education.

Brinster, a veterinarian and the Richard King Mellon Professor of Reproductive Physiology at the University of Pennsylvania, is one of the recipients of this year's Gairdner Awards.

Brinster is receiving the award for "his pioneering discoveries in germ line modification in mammals," according to…

Read More »

When Ronald Evans discovered a way to make mice run farther and longer than they ever had before, he didn't understand what he had unleashed on the world of sport.

The molecular biologist's intent was to help people with metabolic disease, such as obesity and diabetes. But he opened up the possibility of a drug that could be abused by athletes to push the limits of human endurance.

The next step is to put his research into a pill, and now the renowned professor at the Salk Institute for…

Read More »

The Gairdner Foundation offers its congratulations to Roger Kornberg who has been awarded the 2006 Nobel chemistry prize "for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription."

The Swedish Academy of Sciences said Roger Kornberg's research into how ribonucleic acid, RNA, moves genetic information around the body was of "fundamental medical importance."

"Forty-seven years ago, the then twelve-year-old Roger Kornberg came to Stockholm to see his father, Arthur Kornberg, receive…

Read More »

Canada's most prestigious bio-medical awards continued their remarkable track record in predicting Nobel Prize winners yesterday when a pair of 2005 Gairdner Foundation recipients were named this year's Nobel laureates in medicine,

American geneticists Craig Mello and Dr. Andrew Fire, who each won the $30,000 Canadian prize last year for their groundbreaking work in silencing genes, will split the $1.4 million (U.S.) Nobel award in Stockholm Dec. 10.

It's the 67th time in the Gairdner's…

Read More »