Vale receives 2012 Lasker Award

Ronald Vale, PhD, of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), was one of three scientists awarded the 2012 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award. The researchers’ work, beginning more than three decades ago, has helped illuminate several critical aspects of life — how the heart beats and how cells transport material around internally.

The other two scientists were James Spudich, PhD, of Stanford University, and Michael Sheetz, PhD, of Columbia University.

Each scientist led efforts beginning in the early 1980s that uncovered the basis of muscle contractions and heartbeats; that identified tiny molecular motors that chug cargo to and fro within cells; and that described the microscopic roadways along which these motors travel.
Talking about one of these molecular motor proteins, almost 30 years after he first co-discovered it, Vale is still filled with wonder.

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