Sloan-Kettering Institute Researcher Joan Massagué Wins BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine
NEW YORK-(Business Wire)-January 28, 2009 - The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Biomedicine category has gone in this inaugural edition to cancer researcher Joan Massagué i Solé, Chairman of the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program at the Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York. Massagué’s research has elucidated fundamental processes that control cell division and identified genes playing a key role in tumor generation and metastasis.
“I am honored to receive such a prestigious award and I am proud that an international initiative to recognize knowledge as future capital comes from an institution, the BBVA Foundation, of Spanish nationality,” said Massagué, a Barcelona native. “In a field as wide as Biomedicine, the fact that the jury has singled out my work is an encouragement to my group and to other researchers in oncology. We strive to forward the frontiers of oncology, beginning with the study of very basic aspects like cell biology and behavior, that are perhaps abstruse for most people, in order to address others as concrete as metastasis, so that what yesterday seemed impossible is today a tentative promise and might, in a few years’ time, become a solution.”
Joan Massagué’s research stands out for the identification and characterization of the transforming growth factor (TGF) beta protein, which belongs to a large family of factors that regulate the cell division process. It is essential for an organism’s normal development, but is also implicated in disease processes such as malformations and cancer.
“His studies have considerably increased the understanding of metastasis and have great potential for clinical application, given that 90 percent of cancer-related deaths are due to this invasive process,” commented the jury chaired by Torsten Wiesel, Nobel laureate in Physiology and Medicine.
In addition to Wiesel, the jury was made up of international biomedical experts, including Angelika Schnieke, an expert on cloning of the Technical University of Munich (Germany), Bruce Whitelaw, a leading expert in transgenic animals at Roslin Institute (United Kingdom), Dario Alessi of the Scottish Institute for Cell Signalling (United Kingdom), Robin Lovell-Badge of the National Institute for Medical Research (United Kingdom), Josep Baselga, oncologist in the Research Institute of Vall d’Hebron Hospital (Spain), and Juan Modolell of the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Center (Spain).
The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards seek to recognize and encourage world-class research at international level, and can be considered second only to the Nobel Prize in their monetary amount, an annual 3.2 million euros, and the breadth of the scientific and artistic areas covered. The awards, organized in partnership with Spain’s National Research Council (CSIC), take in eight categories carrying a cash prize of 400,000 euros each. The Biomedicine award, the third to be decided, is to honor contributions which significantly advance the stock of knowledge in this area for reasons of their importance and originality.
The BBVA Foundation supports knowledge generation, scientific research and the promotion of culture, relaying the results of its work to society at large. This effort materializes in research projects, human capital investment, specialization courses, grants and awards. Among the Foundation’s preferred areas of activity are basic sciences, biomedicine, ecology and conservation biology, the social sciences and literary and musical creation.
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