2017 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences awarded to IntechOpen's Yoshinori Ohsumi

In October we had the privilege and honor to announce that IntechOpen author, Yoshinori Ohsumi, Tokyo Institute of Technology, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work and discoveries of mechanisms for autophagy.  

Today, we would like to congratulate Prof. Ohsumi once again as he is the recent recipient of the 2017 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. Prof. Ohsumi was awarded this prize alongside Roeland Nusse (Stanford University); Harry F. Noller (University of California, Santa Cruz);  Stephen J. Elledge (Harvard Medical School); and Huda Yahya Zoghbi (Baylor College of Medicine).

The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences was established three years ago by founders of companies including Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. to honor scientific advances that enable a better understanding of living systems and extending human life.

Each of the five Life Science winners received a $3 million prize, which is the largest individual monetary prize awarded in science.

Prof. Ohsumi’s research of mechanisms for autophagy examines a process in which unwanted or potentially harmful cell proteins are broken down and recycled within cells. This process has been found to be an integral part of our developing understanding of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes and cancer.

Again, we would like to congratulate Prof. Ohsumi for this incredible achievement, and the second of this caliber for 2016/2017.

Read Prof. Ohsumi’s IntechOpen chapter here.

Learn more about the 2017 Breakthrough Prize awardees here.