Lee Hartwell wins Lasker Medical Research Award

Dr. Lee Hartwell

Dr. Lee Hartwell, president and director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and UW professor of genetics, has received one of three 1998 Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards. The nation’s most distinguished honor for outstanding contributions to basic and clinical medical research, the Lasker Awards were presented Friday, Sept. 25 at a luncheon in New York City.

The researchers were honored for the discovery of the universal mechanism that controls cell division in all eukaryotic (nucleated) organisms, from yeasts to frogs to humans. The process of cell regulation ­ how cells determine when and how to multiply or otherwise develop, and how that process can go awry ­ is fundamental to understanding how cancer cells mutate and to developing approaches that predict, prevent or reverse that mutation. Much of Hartwell’s prize-winning research was conducted at the UW.

The Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation since 1946 has distributed more than 300 awards; often called “America’s Nobels.” Fifty-nine recipients have received the Nobel Prize. ¶