Elaine Fuchs awarded 2011 Albany Medical Center Prize

Elaine Fuchs, head of Rockefeller's Laboratory of Mammalian Cell Biology and Development, was named a recipient of this year's Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research, at $500,000 the largest award in medicine and science in the United States. Fuchs, recognized for her contributions toward realizing the vast potential of stem cells to treat or reverse disease, shares the prize with James A. Thomson of the University of Wisconsin in Madison and Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan.

Fuchs' work has focused on the biology of stem cells. Specifically, Fuchs' expertise involves skin and hair, both of which develop from a single type of skin stem cell. Her breakthroughs in understanding how these stem cells make skin and hair and how they repair wounds have led her laboratory to the genetic bases of human skin disorders, including cancers. Fuchs is widely credited with developing reverse genetics techniques that have made stem cell and genetic research easier for all scientists.

"In order to use stem cells to our advantage therapeutically, we need to understand how they operate on a very basic, molecular level," she says.

"Elaine's work has had an important impact on how we understand genetic diseases of the skin, and on what we know about how adult skin stem cells differentiate. Because of her research we are closer to being able to realize the therapeutic potential of stem cells," says Marc Tessier-Lavigne, the university's president. "I am very pleased to see her contributions recognized with this award."

Provided by Rockefeller University