Wolf Prize in Medicine
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Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates The Wolf Prize in Medicine is awarded annually by the Wolf Foundation in Israel.<ref name="Gurdon">Template:Cite book</ref> It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture, Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics and Arts. The Prize has been stated to be the second most prestigious award in scienceTemplate:Fact and a significant predictor of the Nobel Prize.<ref name="Siegel-Itzkovich">Template:Cite news</ref>
Laureates
Source:<ref name="recipients">Wolf Prize Recipients in Medicine</ref>
| Year | Name | Nationality | Citation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1978 | George D. Snell | Template:USA | for discovery of H-2 antigens, which codes for major transplantation antigens and the onset of the immune response. |
| Jean Dausset | Template:FRA | for discovering the HL-A system, the major histocompatibility complex in man and its primordial role in organ transplantation. | |
| Jon J. van Rood | Template:NED | for his contribution to the understanding of the complexity of the HL-A system in man and its implications in transplantation and in disease. | |
| 1979 | Roger Wolcott Sperry | Template:USA | for his studies on the functional differentiation of the right and left hemispheres of the brain. |
| Arvid Carlsson | Template:SWE | for his work which established the role of dopamine as a neurotransmitter. | |
| Oleh Hornykiewicz | Template:AUT | for opening a new approach in the control of Parkinson's disease by L-Dopa. | |
| 1980 | César Milstein Leo Sachs James L. Gowans |
Template:ARG / Template:GBR; Template:ISR; Template:GBR |
for their contributions to knowledge of the function and dysfunction of the body cells through their studies on the immunological role of the lymphocytes, the development of specific antibodies and the elucidation of mechanisms governing the control and differentiation of normal and cancer cells. |
| 1981 | Barbara McClintock | Template:USA | for her imaginative and important contributions to our understanding of chromosome structure behaviour and function, and for her identification and description of transposable genetic (mobile) elements. |
| Stanley N. Cohen | Template:USA | for his concepts underlying genetic engineering; for constructing a biologically functional hybrid plasmid, and for achieving actual expression of a foreign gene implanted in E. coli by the recombinant DNA method. | |
| 1982 | Jean-Pierre Changeux | Template:FRA | for the isolation, purification and characterization of the acetylcholine receptor. |
| Solomon H. Snyder | Template:USA | for the development of the ways to label neurotransmitter receptors which provide tools to describe their properties. | |
| James W. Black | Template:GBR | for developing agents which block beta adrenergic and histamine receptors. | |
| 1983/4 | No award | ||
| 1984/5 | Donald F. Steiner | Template:USA | for his discoveries concerning the bio-synthesis and processing of insulin which have had profound implications for basic biology and clinical medicine. |
| 1986 | Osamu Hayaishi | Template:JPN | for his discovery of the oxygenase enzymes and elucidation of their structure and biological importance. |
| 1987 | Pedro Cuatrecasas Meir Wilchek |
Template:SPN Template:ISR |
for the invention and development of affinity chromatography and its applications to biomedical sciences. |
| 1988 | Henri G. Hers Elizabeth F. Neufeld |
Template:BEL Template:USA |
for the biochemical elucidation of lysosomal storage diseases and the resulting contributions to biology, pathology, prenatal diagnosis and therapeutics. |
| 1989 | John Gurdon | Template:GBR | for his introduction of the xenopus oocyte into molecular biology and his demonstration that the nucleus of a differentiated cell and of the egg differ in expression but not in the content of genetic material. |
| Edward B. Lewis | Template:USA | for his demonstration and exploration of the genetic control of the development of body segments by homeotic genes. | |
| 1990 | Maclyn McCarty | Template:USA | for his part in the demonstration that the transforming factor in bacteria is due to deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and the concomitant discovery that the genetic material is composed of DNA. |
| 1991 | Seymour Benzer | Template:USA | for having generated a new field of molecular neurogenetics by his pioneering research on the dissection of the nervous system and behavior by gene mutations. |
| 1992 | M. Judah Folkman | Template:USA | for his discoveries which originated the concept and developed the field of angiogenesis research. |
| 1993 | No award | ||
| 1994/5 | Michael J. Berridge Yasutomi Nishizuka |
Template:GBR Template:JPN |
for their discoveries concerning cellular transmembrane signalling involving phospholipids and calcium. |
| 1995/6 | Stanley B. Prusiner | Template:USA | for discovering prions, a new class of pathogens that cause important neurodegenerative disease by inducing changes in protein structure. |
| 1997 | Mary Frances Lyon | Template:GBR | for her hypothesis concerning the random inactivation of X-chromosomes in mammals. |
| 1998 | Michael Sela Ruth Arnon |
Template:ISR Template:ISR |
for their major discoveries in the field of immunology. |
| 1999 | Eric R. Kandel | Template:USA | for the elucidation of the organismic, cellular and molecular mechanisms whereby short-term memory is converted to a long-term form. |
| 2000 | No award | ||
| 2001 | Avram Hershko Alexander Varshavsky |
Template:ISR / Template:HUN; Template:RUS / Template:USA |
for the discovery of the ubiquitin system of intracellular protein degradation and the crucial functions of this system in cellular regulation. |
| 2002/3 | Ralph L. Brinster | Template:USA | for the development of procedures to manipulate mouse ova and embryos, which has enabled transgenesis and its applications in mice. |
| Mario Capecchi Oliver Smithies |
Template:ITA / Template:USA; Template:GBR / Template:USA |
for their contribution to the development of gene-targeting, enabling elucidation of gene function in mice. | |
| 2004 | Robert A. Weinberg | Template:USA | for his discovery that cancer cells including human tumor cells, carry somatically mutated genes-oncogenes that operate to drive their malignant proliferation. |
| Roger Y. Tsien | Template:USA | for his seminal contribution to the design and biological application of novel fluorescent and photolabile molecules to analyze and perturb cell signal transduction. | |
| 2005 | Alexander Levitzki | Template:ISR | for pioneering signal transduction therapy and for developing tyrosine kinase inhibitors as effective agents against cancer and a range of other diseases. |
| Anthony R. Hunter | Template:GBR / Template:USA | for the discovery of protein kinases that phosphorylate tyrosine residues in proteins, critical for the regulation of a wide variety of cellular events, including malignant transformation. | |
| Anthony J. Pawson | Template:GBR / Template:CAN | for his discovery of protein domains essential for mediating protein-protein interactions in cellular signaling pathways, and the insights this research has provided into cancer. | |
| 2006/7 | No award | ||
| 2008/9 | Howard Cedar Aharon Razin |
Template:USA Template:ISR |
for their fundamental contributions to our understanding of the role of DNA methylation in the control of gene expression. |
| 2010 | Axel Ullrich | Template:GER | for groundbreaking cancer research that has led to development of new drugs. |
| 2011 | Shinya Yamanaka Rudolf Jaenisch |
Template:JAP; Template:GER / Template:USA |
for the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) from skin cells (SY) and demonstration that iPS cells can be used to cure genetic disease in a mammal, thus establishing their therapeutic potential (RJ). |
| 2012 | Ronald M. Evans | Template:USA | for his discovery of the gene super-family encoding nuclear receptors and elucidating the mechanism of action of this class of receptors. |
| 2013 | No award | ||
| 2014 | Nahum Sonenberg | Template:ISR / Template:CAN | for his discovery of the proteins that control the protein expression mechanism and their operation. |
| Gary Ruvkun Victor Ambros |
Template:USA; Template:USA |
for the discovery of the micro-RNA molecules that play a key role in controlling gene expression in natural processes and disease development. | |
| 2015 | John Kappler Philippa Marrack |
Template:USA; Template:USA |
for major contributions to the understanding of the key antigen-specific molecules, the T cell receptor for antigen and antibodies and how these molecules participate in immune recognition and effector function. |
| Jeffrey Ravetch | Template:USA | ||
| 2016 | C. Ronald Kahn | Template:USA | for pioneering studies defining insulin signaling and its alterations in disease. |
| Lewis C. Cantley | Template:USA | for discovery of phosphoinositide- 3 kinases and their roles in physiology and disease. | |
| 2017 | James P. Allison | Template:USA | for a revolution in cancer treatment due to the discovery of the immune control barrier. |
| 2018 | No award | ||
| 2019 | Jeffrey M. Friedman | Template:USA | for the discovery of Leptin and the entirely new endocrine system controlling body weight (and many other processes).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> |
| 2020 | Emmanuelle Charpentier | Template:FRA | for deciphering and repurposing the bacterial CRISPR/Cas9 immune system for genome editing. |
| Jennifer Doudna | Template:USA | for revealing the medicine-revolutionizing mechanism of bacterial immunity via RNA-guided genome editing.<ref>Wolf Prize 2020 – Medicine</ref> | |
| 2021 | Joan Steitz | Template:USA | for her many fundamental contributions to the field of RNA biology.<ref name="auto">Template:Cite web</ref> |
| Lynne Elizabeth Maquat | Template:USA | for discovering a mechanism that destroys mutant messenger RNA in cells, nonsense-mediated mRNA decay.<ref name="auto"/> | |
| Adrian Krainer | Template:URU / Template:USA | for his fundamental mechanistic discoveries on RNA splicing leading to a world’s first treatment for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).<ref name="auto"/> | |
| 2022 | No award | ||
| 2023 | Daniel J. Drucker | Template:CAN | for pioneering work in elucidating the mechanisms and therapeutic potential of enteroendocrine hormones.<ref>Wolf Prize 2023</ref> |
| 2024 | Botond Roska José-Alain Sahel |
Template:HUN / Template:Flag; Template:FRA / Template:USA |
for sight-saving and vision restoration to blind people using optogenetics.<ref>Laureates 2024</ref> |
| 2025 | Pamela J. Bjorkman | Template:USA | for pioneering innovative strategies to overcome viral defenses through novel antibody-focused approaches.<ref>Laureate 2025</ref> |
Laureates per country
Below is a chart of all laureates per country (updated to 2025 laureates). Some laureates are counted more than once if they have multiple citizenships.
| Country | Number of laureates |
|---|---|
| Template:Flag | 39 |
| Template:Flag | 9 |
| Template:Flag | 8 |
| Template:Flag | 4 |
| Template:Flag | 3 |
| Template:Flag | 3 |
| Template:Flag | 2 |
| Template:Flag | 2 |
| Template:Flag | 1 |
| Template:Flag | 1 |
| Template:Flag | 1 |
| Template:Flag | 1 |
| Template:Flag | 1 |
| Template:Flag | 1 |
| Template:Flag | 1 |
| Template:Flag | 1 |
| Template:Flag | 1 |
| Template:Flag | 1 |