winners left to top left: .. Brian J. Druker, Masato Sagawa, Janet D. Rowley, and Nicholas B. Lydon
Japan Foundation Prize
TOKYO -A trio of US scientists will share this year of Japan Prize for their work on bringing a drug against leukemia from a basic discovery to clinical success, while a Japanese scientific equipment takes another price for a breakthrough with permanent magnets.
Janet Rowley of the University of Chicago, Brian Druker of Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, and Nicholas Lydon Blueprint drugs in Cambridge, Massachusetts, jointly won the price of health care and medical technology for the development of a drug against leukemia called imatinib, better known as Gleevec in the United States and Glivec elsewhere. In the 1970s, Rowley identified several chromosomal translocations in which a part of a chromosome is transferred to another, in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). Lydon then Ciba-Geigy (now Novartis) in Basel, Switzerland, Druker and later collaborated to develop compounds that inhibit the activity of the enzyme resulting abnormal translocations, which causes cell proliferation runaway. They imatinib led clinical trials from 1998.
Now used as a pill once a day, the drug has CML, once fatal within 3 to 5 years, "a manageable disease, "Druker said at the press conference today prize announcement. He added that "hundreds of other drugs in development" are based on the same approach to block the activity of specific enzymes associated with a given type of cancer.
Masato Sagawa, based Kyoto Intermetallics Co., won the award in the field of environment, energy, and infrastructure to work on neodymium-iron-boron alloy is the high performance permanent magnets in the heart of energy efficient motors used in all kinds of hard drives for construction equipment. Sagawa made his key research at Fujitsu Ltd. and Sumitomo Special Metals in 1970 and 1980. He continues to refine the material to expand the range of applications.
The three winners health also will share a $ 650,000 prize; Sagawa only gets an equal amount. All four will receive their prizes, including commemorative gold medals, at April 1 ceremony in Tokyo.
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