Art Levinson, Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, and Yuri Milner Announce the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences

AsiaNet 52149

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 20, 2013/ PRN=KYODO JBN/--

    - 11 Inaugural winners receive US$3 million each for Groundbreaking

Achievements in Life Science Research

    Art Levinson, Sergey Brin, Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan

and Yuri Milner announced today the launch of the Breakthrough Prize in Life

Sciences ("Breakthrough Prize"), recognizing excellence in research aimed at

curing intractable diseases and extending human life. The prize will be

administered by the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation, a

not-for-profit corporation ("Foundation") dedicated to advancing breakthrough

research, celebrating scientists and generating excitement about the pursuit of

science as a career.

    The first 11 recipients of the Breakthrough Prize are:

    - Cornelia I. Bargmann

    - David Botstein

    - Lewis C. Cantley

    - Hans Clevers

    - Napoleone Ferrara

    - Titia de Lange

    - Eric S. Lander

    - Charles L. Sawyers

    - Bert Vogelstein

    - Robert A. Weinberg

    - Shinya Yamanaka

    All prize winners have agreed to serve on the Selection Committee of the

Foundation to choose recipients of future prizes.

    Founding sponsors of the Breakthrough Prize include Sergey Brin and Anne

Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, and Yuri Milner, who collectively

have agreed to establish 5 annual prizes, US$3 million each, going forward.

    Art Levinson, Chairman of the Board of Apple and Chairman and former CEO of

Genentech, will serve as the Chairman of the Board of the Foundation, while

additional directors will include Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg and Yuri

Milner.

    "I am delighted to announce the launch of the Breakthrough Prize in Life

Sciences and welcome its first recipients," said Art Levinson. "I believe this

new prize will shine a light on the extraordinary achievements of the

outstanding minds in the field of life sciences, enhance medical innovation,

and ultimately become a platform for recognizing future discoveries. I also

want to thank our founding sponsors, Sergey Brin, Anne Wojcicki, Mark

Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan and Yuri Milner. Without their contribution, this

prize would not have been possible."

    "We are thrilled to support scientists who think big, take risks and have

made a significant impact on our lives. These scientists should be household

names and heros in society," said Anne Wojcicki.

    "Curing a disease should be worth more than a touchdown," said Sergey Brin.

    "Priscilla and I are honored to be part of this," said Mark Zuckerberg. "We

believe the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences has the potential to provide a

platform for other models of philanthropy, so people everywhere have an

opportunity at a better future."

    "Solving the enormous complexity of human diseases calls for a much bigger

effort compared to fundamental physics and therefore requires multiple sponsors

to reward outstanding achievements," said Yuri Milner.

    Going forward, each year's prize winners will join the Selection Committee

for future awardees. One of the distinguishing characteristics of the

Breakthrough Prize will be a transparent selection process, in which anyone

will be able to nominate a candidate online for consideration. Also, the prize

can be shared between any number of deserving scientists and can be received

more than once. In addition, there are no age restrictions for nominees.

    All Breakthrough Prize recipients will be invited to present public talks

targeting a general audience. These lectures, together with supporting

materials, will be made available to the public, allowing everyone to keep

abreast of the latest developments in life sciences, guided by contemporary

masters of the field.

    About the Breakthrough Prize Foundation:

    The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation is a not-for-profit

corporation dedicated to advancing breakthrough research in life sciences,

celebrating scientists and generating excitement about the pursuit of science

as a career. Additional information about the Foundation and the 2013

recipients of the prizes can be found at

http://www.breakthroughprizeinlifesciences.org.

    About the prize winners:

    Cornelia I. Bargmann

    Torsten N. Wiesel Professor and Head of the Lulu and Anthony Wang

Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior at the Rockefeller University.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

    For the genetics of neural circuits and behavior, and synaptic guidepost

molecules.

    David Botstein

    Director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics and the

Anthony B. Evnin Professor of Genomics at Princeton University.

    For linkage mapping of Mendelian disease in humans using DNA polymorphisms.

    Lewis C. Cantley

    Margaret and Herman Sokol Professor and Director of the Cancer Center at

Weill Cornell Medical College and New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

    For the discovery of PI 3-Kinase and its role in cancer metabolism.

    Hans Clevers

    Professor of Molecular Genetics at Hubrecht Institute.

    For describing the role of Wnt signaling in tissue stem cells and cancer.

    Titia de Lange

    Leon Hess Professor, Head of the Laboratory of Cell Biology and Genetics,

and Director of the Anderson Center for Cancer Research at the Rockefeller

University.

    For research on telomeres, illuminating how they protect chromosome ends

and their role in genome instability in cancer.

    Napoleone Ferrara

    Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Senior Deputy Director for Basic

Sciences at Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego.

    For discoveries in the mechanisms of angiogenesis that led to therapies for

cancer and eye diseases.

    Eric S. Lander

    President and Founding Director of the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of

Harvard and MIT. Professor of Biology at MIT. Professor of Systems Biology at

Harvard Medical School.

    For the discovery of general principles for identifying human disease

genes, and enabling their application to medicine through the creation and

analysis of genetic, physical and sequence maps of the human genome

    Charles L. Sawyers

    Chair, Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering

Cancer Center. Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

    For cancer genes and targeted therapy.

    Bert Vogelstein

    Director of the Ludwig Center and Clayton Professor of Oncology and

Pathology at the Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

    For cancer genomics and tumor suppressor genes.

    Robert A. Weinberg

    Daniel K. Ludwig Professor for Cancer Research at MIT and Director of the

MIT/Ludwig Center for Molecular Oncology. Member, Whitehead Institute for

Biomedical Research.

    For characterization of human cancer genes.

    Shinya Yamanaka

    Director of Center for iPS Cell Research and Application, Kyoto University

    Senior Investigator, Gladstone Institutes, San Francisco

    For induced pluripotent stem cells.

    About the participants:

    Art Levinson

    Arthur D. Levinson is chairman of Genentech, Inc. and a member of the Roche

Board of Directors. He has been chairman of Genentech since 1999, and he served

as chief executive officer of Genentech from 1995 to 2009. Levinson joined

Genentech in 1980 as a research scientist and became vice president, Research

Technology in 1989; vice president, Research in 1990; senior vice president,

Research in 1992; and senior vice president, Research and Development in 1993.

    Art was appointed Chairman of the Board of Apple in November 2011. He had

served as a co-lead director of Apple's board since 2005 and a director since

2000. He is Chairman of the Board of Amyris and a director of NGM

Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He was a

director of Google, Inc. from 2004 to 2009. He currently serves on the Board of

Scientific Consultants of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the

Industrial Advisory Board of the California Institute for Quantitative

Biomedical Research, the Advisory Council for the Princeton University

Department of Molecular Biology and the Advisory Council for the Lewis-Sigler

Institute for Integrative Genomics.

    Art has authored or co-authored more than 80 scientific articles and has

been a named inventor on 11 United States patents. Art received his Bachelor of

Science degree from the University of Washington and earned a doctorate in

Biochemical Sciences from Princeton University.

    Mark Zuckerberg

    Mark Zuckerberg is the founder chairman and CEO of Facebook, which he

founded in 2004 in his college dorm room.

    Mark is responsible for setting the overall direction and product strategy

for Facebook. He leads the design of Facebook's service and the development of

its core technology and infrastructure.

    Mark studied computer science at Harvard University before moving the

company to Palo Alto, California. In September 2010, Mark donated $100 million

to the Newark Public School System to help renovate and revamp the system.

    Sergey Brin

    Sergey Brin, a native of Moscow, received a Bachelor of Science degree with

honors in mathematics and computer science from the University of Maryland at

College Park. He is currently on leave from the Ph.D. program in computer

science at Stanford University, where he received his master's degree. Sergey

is a recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship as well as

an honorary MBA from Instituto de Empresa. At Stanford, he met Larry Page and

worked on the project that became Google. Together they founded Google Inc. in

1998, and Sergey continues to share responsibility for day-to-day operations

with Larry Page and Eric Schmidt.

    Sergey's research interests include search engines, information extraction

from unstructured sources, and data mining of large text collections and

scientific data. He has published more than a dozen academic papers, including

Dynamic Data Mining: A New Architecture for Data with High Dimensionality,

which he published with Larry Page.

    Sergey has been a featured speaker at several international academic,

business and technology forums, including the World Economic Forum and the

Technology, Entertainment and Design Conference.

    Anne Wojcicki

    Anne Wojcicki is Co-Founder of 23andMe, a privately held personal genetics

company that helps individuals understand their own genetic information through

DNA analysis technologies and Web-based interactive tools. By encouraging

individuals to access and learn about their own genetic information, 23andMe

aims to create a common, standardized resource that has the potential to

accelerate drug discovery and bring personalized medicine to the public. Anne

has an extensive background in health-care investing, focused primarily on

biotechnology companies. She received a bachelor's degree in biology from Yale

University.

    Yuri Milner

    Yuri founded Mail.ru Group in 1999. Under his leadership, Mail.ru Group

became the leading European Internet company. Yuri took that business public in

2010, stepping down from his role of Chairman at the beginning of 2012 to focus

his efforts on global Internet investments. DST Global, a family of funds

investing in Internet companies, was established in 2009 and is one of the

largest Internet investors in the world.

    Yuri graduated from Moscow State University in 1985 with an advanced degree

in theoretical physics and subsequently conducted research at the Institute of

Physics at the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 2012 he launched the Fundamental

Physics Prize Foundation, a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to advancing

knowledge of the Universe at the deepest level by awarding annual prizes for

scientific breakthroughs, as well as communicating the excitement of

fundamental physics to the public.

SOURCE: Milner Foundation