By Hannah Green
Two Massachusetts researchers are among the recipients of an award known as the “Oscars of Science” for their contributions to the life sciences.
David Liu and Alberto Ascherio were recognized on Saturday with the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.
Ascherio is a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and a professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School. Liu is affiliated with the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and has founded several biotech companies.
The Breakthrough Prize was created to honor scientists by founding sponsors Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki, and Julia and Yuri Milner. Each prize is $3 million and presented in the fields of life sciences, fundamental physics and mathematics.
Liu is well-known in the biotech industry for starting companies like Beam Therapeutics, Prime Medicine and Editas Medicine. His lab created two technologies that underpin these companies.
Liu is credited with developing two now widely used gene-editing technologies — base editing and prime editing — which help correct mutations in DNA that cause genetic diseases.
Just a few weeks ago, Beam Therapeutics announced initial data from a Phase 1/2 trial in alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (AATD) showing what it called the “first-ever clinical genetic correction of a disease-causing mutation.”
“It’s actually a somewhat rare case, at least in my experience, where the aspirations during that initial excitement phase actually ended up pretty much coming true,” Liu told the Business Journal.
Liu was quick to credit his team, including former postdocs Alexis Komor, Nicole Gaudelli and Andrew Anzalone.
“My students and co-workers mean everything to me, so it’s super-important that they get the recognition they deserve,” Liu said.
Liu said that the Breakthrough Prize mission is especially important now given the federal government’s ongoing cuts to science funding, including from the National Institutes of Health, which supports research at hospitals and colleges.
“The current assaults on science and on the government institutions that support science and the development of new medicines like NIH and FDA is incredibly sad, and, I think, harmful,” Liu said. “I anticipate that this kind of damage that we’re seeing now will go down in history as one of the biggest setbacks to human health, to scientific discovery, and, ultimately to U.S. competitiveness, in the history of our country.”
Ascherio said he hopes the Breakthrough Prize will encourage more people to invest in research “to try to compensate for the tragedy we are going through with NIH funding and federal funding.”
He shares the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences with Stephen Hauser for their research on multiple sclerosis.
Ascherio is being recognized for discovering that infection with the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is the necessary condition for getting MS. Ascherio said this knowledge opens the door for possibly treating MS with antiviral drugs or developing a vaccine for EBV that could potentially prevent MS.
“Now we are trying to see… following EBV infection, can we tell, based on your immune response, who will develop MS, who will not?” Ascherio said. “So, if we can do that, then we can identify a specific group of people that can be targeted with a vaccine or antiviral before they develop MS. Beyond MS, our work now, we are trying to extend our research on infection to other neurodegenerative diseases.”