2012 Lucian Award

Abstract

In its more than 45-year lifespan, the Louis and Artur Lucian Award has recognized scientists who tear down walls. “The researcher who stays in his silo may be doomed. The ones who can pop off the lid and open the walls are the ones who will make the new discoveries,” said Jacques Genest, MD, Chair of the Lucian Award Committee. The 2012 Lucian Award winner, Garret FitzGerald of the University of Pennsylvania, left the silo long ago, Dr Genest said, building a resume of creative accomplishments, and now formulating a multidisciplinary strategy for drug discovery and personalized medicine. “Garret FitzGerald is perpetually riding the crest of a wave and never coming down,” Dr Genest said. It makes him just the kind of researcher the Lucian Award was meant to recognize when, in 1965, the late Olga Leibovici created a $2 million bequest at McGill University to honor her brothers, Louis and Artur Lucian. She stipulated that the award go to the best cardiovascular research published that year. Since the first award in 1978, it has recognized seminal advancements in our knowledge of cardiovascular function. One recent sign of the award’s distinction: In 2012, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to 1999 Lucian Award Winner Robert J. Lefkowitz, MD. “It’s wonderful how this philanthropic gift allows the university to recognize excellence,” Dr Genest said. “For instance, the G-coupled proteins identified by Lefkowitz, and inhibitors of these receptors, led to a revolution in cardiovascular medicine.” Lucian Award winners, selected by a committee of former Lucian award winners and McGill researchers, receive $60 000 (CDN), and an invitation to spend a minimum of a week at McGill and to deliver the annual Lucian Lecture. This year’s winner can point to accomplishments in several arenas, including advances in the field of prostanoid biology revealing …