Pioneers of Stem Cell Research Honored with “American Nobel Prize”

ISSCR congratulates Drs. Ernest McCulloch and James Till of the Ontario Cancer Institute and the University of Toronto, recipients of the 2005 Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research. The Lasker Awards are bestowed by the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation as part of its mission to increase public awareness, appreciation and understanding of promising achievements in medical science and increase public support for research.

Till and McCulloch are considered the fathers of stem cell research. They were the first to discover the existence of stem cells in the blood-forming system and in doing so established themselves as pioneers of the field of stem cell research. Their work in the 1960s constituted a conceptual leap forward by transforming the study of blood-cell differentiation to a quantitative experimental discipline, an approach that enabled them to establish the basic principals of stem cell biology that are still in use today.

Their discoveries on blood-forming stem cells ultimately led to an understanding of the basis of bone marrow transplantation, a procedure that prolongs the life of people with leukemia and other blood-cell cancers.

The Lasker Awards are considered the “American Nobel Prize.” In the last 15 years, 19 Lasker Award winners also were awarded the Nobel Prize.

In a statement issued through the Lasker Foundation, Dr. Joseph L. Goldstein, recipient of the 1985 Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1985, and chair of the international jury of researchers that selects Lasker Award recipients, said, “Occasionally scientists take special note of an observation or interpret it in a novel way. These ‘eureka moments’ can profoundly alter the course of scientific progress. The Lasker Basic Research Awardhonors two individuals who uncovered the first stem cell, thus laying the groundwork for the entire field of stem cell biology. Although the notion of self-renewing cells that could mature and specialize in multiple ways had been floating around for decades, no one had ever found them. By properly interpreting and then analyzing an observation that easily could have been overlooked, the awardees showed that stem cells indeed existed in the blood-forming system.”

When they began their collaboration in the late 1950s, McCulloch was experienced in hematology, while Till was experienced in biophysics. The combination yielded a novel and productive combination of skills and interests that led to the development of stem cell research as a scientific endeavor.

Today, both McCulloch and Till are Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada and the Royal Society of London, and in 2004, both were inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame. Both hold the title of University Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto.

Posted: September 21, 2005