Pew Charitable Trusts [to 19 September 2015]
http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/about/news-room/press-releases

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Pew Scholar Stephen Elledge Wins 2015 Lasker Award
September 17, 2015
Stephen Elledge, Ph.D., an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, professor at Harvard Medical School and 1991 Pew scholar, has been named co-winner of the 2015 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award for his groundbreaking work to uncover how cells respond to damaged DNA. First given in 1945, the Lasker Award is considered one of the world’s highest scientific honors and is given to scientists who have made significant contributions to the “understanding, diagnosis, treatment, cure, and prevention of human disease.”

Elledge, who shares the prize with Evelyn Witkin of Rutgers University, discovered that cells have a massive signaling network for sensing and repairing DNA damage. Human cells encounter damaged DNA every day, and if the damage is not repaired quickly it can lead to mutations in genes that typically protect us from diseases such as cancer. Elledge’s work identified the mechanisms for response that keep our genes intact, and his discoveries pave the way to a greater understanding of how these diseases occur…