The winners of the 2024 Breakthrough Prize have been announced, along with the New Horizons and Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prizes. The award, known as the "Oscars of Science," is the world's largest international science prize, with a total of $15.75 million handed out this year.
The five main prizes (3 in life sciences, 1 in fundamental physics, and 1 in mathematics) each award $3 million. The first award in the field of life sciences was awarded to Sabine Hadida, Paul Negulescu and Fredrick Van Goor for the development of a drug that can repair an important protein in cystic fibrosis patients.
These patients are infected with a mutation in a protein gene called CFTR. In 90% of cases, the protein misfolds and does not reach where it should be on the cell surface, and even if it does, it is not in sufficient amount. The average life expectancy of people with cystic fibrosis is 30 years, although this number is increasing over time. TREATMENTS LIKE THEIRSTROFTA'S TAKE A REVOLUTIONARY APPROACH TO REPAIRING SMALL ORGANIC MOLECULES OF PROTEINS.
"Until our therapies came along, there was no treatment that could address the underlying cause of cystic fibrosis. CFTR modulators have truly changed the standard of care. For example, recently published data in the UK suggests that the average life expectancy of children treated with TRIKAFTA between the ages of 12-17 is 82.5 years," the team from Vertex Pharmaceuticals said in an interview with IFLScience.
"Our work has also had an impact on diseases other than cystic fibrosis. We demonstrate that small molecule therapeutics can be used to repair defective proteins and treat genetic diseases. This revolutionary approach at the time gave new hope that other genetic diseases could also be treated with small molecule treatments. ”
The second award in the life sciences category was awarded to Carl H. June and Michel Sadelain for their contributions to the development of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell immunotherapy. This method targets and kills cancer cells by altering the patient's immune cells, and subsequent studies have shown that this approach is very promising. Current research focuses on the prevention of tumor recurrence and the possible application of this approach to the treatment of autoimmune, inflammatory, cardiac and neurodegenerative diseases.
The third life sciences award was given to Thomas Gasser, Ellen Sidransky and Andrew Singleton for their work in identifying risk genes for Parkinson's disease. Their work has led to a paradigm shift in the understanding and development of this disease. The shift has also had a huge impact on new therapies that researchers hope will use to stop the progression of the disease or prevent it from happening altogether.
The Fundamental Physics Prize was awarded to John Cardy and Alexander Zamolodchikov for their work on expanding and evolving quantum field theory. In particular, Cardy invented mathematical models for certain transformations in quantum systems, such as helium becoming a frictionless superfluid or superconductivity under certain conditions.
The Mathematics Prize was awarded to Simon Brendle for his unique contributions to differential geometry, especially for wave surfaces. If you imagine soap bubbles trapped between swinging spring rings, measuring the surface of these bubbles is what this math is all about. The application of this theory is very wide-ranging, including the understanding of space-time itself.
Phase transitions, curves, and singular surfaces are also the focus of Maryam Mirzakhani's New Frontiers Award and New Horizons Award. There are three winners in each category. Among them, the former was awarded Hannah Larson, Laura Monk and Mayuko Yamashita, each with a prize of $50,000. The winners of the latter were Roland Bauerschmidt, Michael Groechenig and Angkana Rüland.
The New Vision Physics Prize has a strong focus on astrophysics. Laura M. Pérez, Paola Pinilla, Nienke van der Marel and Til Birnstiel received the award for their research into dust traps around young stars and how they could lead to planet formation. Another award was co-awarded by Mikhail Ivanov, Oliver Philcox and Marko Simonović for their work on the large-scale structure of the universe and the fundamental physics knowledge we can gain from it.
Last but not least, Michael Johnson and Alexandru Lupsasca received the New Horizons Prize in Physics for their work on the photon ring. A ring is a structure made up of light rays around a black hole. These rays of light revolve around the black hole before escaping to us, and they are imprinted with the properties of the black hole. The escaping light is unscathed as it passes through the surrounding material, allowing us to observe the elegant geometry of the black hole's space-time. This is an incredible property of black holes, unlike anything we've studied before.
Having this information is essential to test the theory of gravity and better understand this fundamental force. Johnson and Lupsasca plan to measure the halo by improving the Event Horizon Telescope. The Horizon Event Telescope is a virtual facility, the size of the Earth, that is responsible for taking the first pictures of a black hole. These include the black hole at the center of M87 (also known as M87*) and the center of the Milky Way (Sagittarius A*).
"The Horizon Event Telescope is a remarkable experiment that has successfully captured a realistic image of a black hole in the sky for the first time using an array of telescopes across the globe. However, its resolution is currently limited by the diameter of the Earth: in order to obtain a clear enough image to resolve the ring, it seems necessary to combine the telescope array with a more distant space satellite," said Alexandru Lupsasca, winner of the Vanderbilt University, in an interview with IFLScience.
"Michael Johnson and I, along with many other talented colleagues, are working on a detailed plan for NASA to launch a space mission targeting the rings of supermassive black holes targeting M87* and Sgr A*. ”
Each New Vision Award is worth $100,000. Since the inception of the Major Breakthrough Awards, $308 million has been awarded. The awards were established in 2012 by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Julia and Yuri Milner, and Anne Wojcicki.