HOBOKEN, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Wiley Foundation today announced the 17th annual Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences will be awarded to Lynne E. Maquat for elucidating the mechanism of nonsense-mediated messenger RNA decay, a fundamental process whereby cells remove defective transcripts that can encode toxic proteins.
Dr. Maquat is a Professor at the Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics in the School of Medicine and Dentistry, the Founding Director of the Center for RNA Biology: From Genome to Therapeutics, the Founding Chair of the University of Rochester Graduate Women in Science, and the J. Lowell Orbison Endowed Chair at the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York.
"The 2018 Wiley Prize honors Dr. Maquat, whose work illuminated how our cells prevent production of toxic proteins by removing defective messenger RNAs," said Dr. Titia de Lange, Chairperson of the awards jury for the Wiley Prize at the Rockefeller University in New York City.
"The Wiley Foundation honors research that champions novel approaches and challenges accepted thinking in the biomedical sciences. The work of the 2018 Wiley Prize recipient Lynne Maquat truly upholds this mission," said Deborah Wiley, Chair of the Wiley Foundation. "We are pleased to highlight the impact that her research on messenger RNA decay pathways has had in advancing our knowledge of the cellular cause of many human diseases."
First awarded in 2002, The Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences is presented annually to recognize contributions that have opened new fields of research or have advanced concepts in a particular biomedical discipline. Among the many distinguished recipients of the Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences, nine have gone on to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and two have gone on to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
This year's award of $50,000 will be presented to the winner on April 13, 2018 at the Wiley Prize luncheon at The Rockefeller University. The winner will then deliver an honorary lecture as part of The Rockefeller University Lecture Series. This event will be live streamed via the Current Protocols' Webinar Series and registration is free.
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Full biography of Wiley 2018 Prize Winner
Lynne E. Maquat, PhD, the J. Lowell Orbison Endowed Chair, is Professor at the Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics in the School of Medicine and Dentistry, Founding Director of the Center for RNA Biology: From Genome to Therapeutics, and Founding Chair of the University of Rochester Graduate Women in Science at the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY. She is an elected Member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2006), the National Academy of Sciences (2011) and the National Academy of Medicine (2017). Lynne was a Batsheva de Rothschild Fellow of the Israel Academy of Sciences & Humanities (2012-3) and has received the William C. Rose Award from the American Society for Biochemistry & Molecular Biology (2014), a Canada Gairdner International Award (2015), the international RNA Society Lifetime Achievement Award in Service (2010) and in Science (2017), the Vanderbilt Prize in Biomedical Sciences (2017), and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Excellence in Science Award (2018). Lynne wishes to acknowledge continuous support from the National Institutes of Health for the past 35 years, without which her research would not have been possible.