(Press-News.org) Maria Jasin, whose fundamental research on repair of damaged DNA in cells has transformed our understanding of cancers linked to inherited gene mutations, has been selected as the 2025 recipient of the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize. Awarded annually by Rockefeller University, the prize is the preeminent international award recognizing outstanding women scientists.
Jasin, an investigator at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, will be honored at a ceremony on campus on September 16. She will be presented with the award by architect Wendy Evans Joseph, the founder of Studio Joseph who is known for her work with public, cultural, and educational institutions throughout the country, including the infrastructure design for the Campus Community Bridge at Rockefeller.
A giant in the field of DNA repair, Jasin overturned previous assumptions when she showed that homologous recombination is a major pathway for the repair of DNA breaks in mammalian cells. She went on to uncover the mechanism by which the tumor suppressor genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 can impede the development of breast cancer, showing that cells require the appropriate function of these genes to repair a type of DNA damage called a double-strand break. Absent this protection, the likelihood of a tumor increases dramatically. Jasin’s lab has also elucidated the roles of BRCA genes in cancer treatment and demonstrated that both BRCA genes may block the occurrence of DNA damage in the first place. A focus of her lab’s current research is to understand DNA repair in breast cells at various developmental stages and in different contexts.
Jasin is also beng honored for her critical contributions to gene editing. “Maria’s work laid a foundation for developing gene editing as a tool for therapy,” says Michael W. Young, selection committee chair and the Richard and Jeanne Fisher Professor at Rockefeller. “Her discovery that chromosome breaks promote recombination allowed her to perform the first site-directed gene editing. By programming cells with site-specific nucleases, her studies mark the starting point for all later gene-editing programs.”
Jasin is a member of the National Academies of Sciences and Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and completed her postdoctoral training at the University of Zürich and Stanford University prior to joining the faculty at MSKCC.
The Pearl Meister Greengard Prize was established by the late Paul Greengard, the Vincent Astor Professor at Rockefeller, and his wife, the sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard. Greengard donated his monetary share of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Rockefeller and, in partnership with generous supporters, established an annual award to recognize outstanding women scientists. The prize, which includes a $100,000 honorarium, is named for Greengard’s mother, who died during his birth.
Visit this page to register for the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize ceremony and learn more about the award. The event is open to the public, but registration for attendees is encouraged.
END
Developmental biologist Maria Jasin wins the 2025 Pearl Meister Greengard Prize
2025-09-12
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Training doctors for the digital age: Canadian study charts new course for health education
2025-09-12
(Toronto, September 12, 2025) As Canada’s health care system rapidly adopts digital technologies, a group of Canadian researchers is calling for a major overhaul of health professional education to ensure consistent, outcomes-based training in digital health and informatics competencies. A new article published in JMIR Medical Education by researchers at the British Columbia Institute of Technology and University of Calgary proposes using the Quintuple Aim as a national guiding framework to prioritize the digital health skills health care workers need now and in the future.
The paper, titled “Shaping the Future of Digital Health Education in Canada: Prioritizing ...
New College of AI, Cyber and Computing launched at UT San Antonio
2025-09-12
(SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS) -- The University of Texas at San Antonio launched the College of AI, Cyber and Computing on Sept. 1 bringing together academic programs in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, computing and data science.
The new college positions UT San Antonio at the forefront of technological education and research and brings the number of academic colleges at UT San Antonio to nine.
Formation of the college began during a multi-phase process in January 2024 with the announcement of a university-wide initiative to elevate the university’s leadership in emerging technologies. Shaped by input across campus and community partners, the effort included a dedicated ...
Collaborative team earns five-year renewal grant from NINDS to continue stroke research
2025-09-12
Stroke research aims to understand the brain’s self-protective and repair mechanisms. Gaining detailed insight into these mechanisms is crucial as such knowledge could lead to newly developed medications and interventions which mimic or engage the brain’s self-protective/repair mechanisms, leading to innovative stroke therapies.
In 2018 the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded a five-year, $2.9 million R01 grant (“Development ...
Vitamin K analogues may help transform the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases
2025-09-12
Neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s disease are characterized by the progressive loss of neurons. The resulting debilitating symptoms, such as loss of memory and cognition, and motor impairment, can significantly degrade patients’ quality of life, confining them to round-the-clock care. While currently used drugs help alleviate symptoms, curative treatments are lacking, thus underscoring the need for novel therapeutic strategies. One such strategy involves the induction of neuronal differentiation, which can replenish lost neurons and ...
Cyclic triaxial tests: Evaluation of liquefaction resistance in chemically treated soils
2025-09-12
Soil liquefaction can be a major threat to the infrastructure and built environments in an earthquake-prone area. This happens due to substantial loss of soil stiffness and strength due to applied stress. Loose, moderately granulated, sandy soil is more prone to soil liquefaction. Recognizing the urgent need to enhance urban resilience in seismic-prone regions, particularly in rapidly urbanizing areas vulnerable to such hazards, scientists are focusing on different mitigation techniques. Soil compaction technique ...
Uniting the light spectrum on a chip
2025-09-12
Focused laser-like light that covers a wide range of frequencies is highly desirable for many scientific studies and for many applications, for instance quality control of manufacturing semiconductor electronic chips. But creating such broadband and coherent light has been difficult to achieve with anything but bulky energy-hungry tabletop devices.
Now, a Caltech team led by Alireza Marandi, a professor of electrical engineering and applied physics at Caltech, has created a tiny device capable of producing an unusually wide range of laser-light ...
Hundreds of new bacteria, and two potential antibiotics, found in soil
2025-09-12
Most bacteria cannot be cultured in the lab—and that’s been bad news for medicine. Many of our frontline antibiotics originated from microbes, yet as antibiotic resistance spreads and drug pipelines run dry, the soil beneath our feet has a vast hidden reservoir of untapped lifesaving compounds.
Now, researchers have developed a way to access this microbial goldmine. Their approach, published in Nature Biotechnology, circumvents the need to grow bacteria in the lab by extracting very large DNA fragments directly from soil to piece together the genomes of previously hidden microbes, and then mines resulting genomes for ...
Smells deceive the brain – are interpreted as taste
2025-09-12
Flavoured drinks without sugar can be perceived as sweet – and now researchers know why. A new study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, published in the journal Nature Communications, reveals that the brain interprets certain aromas as taste.
When we eat or drink, we don’t just experience taste, but rather a ‘flavour’. This taste experience arises from a combination of taste and smell, where aromas from food reach the nose via the oral cavity, known as retronasal odour. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have now shown that the brain integrates these signals earlier than previously thought – already in the insula, ...
New species survival commission fills critical gap in conservation
2025-09-12
A newly-formed group of scientists will be fighting for the survival of species — the smallest ones on the planet.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has launched a species survival commission for microbiology and microbes to serve as a global safeguard for microbial biodiversity and to pursue coordinated conservation action. The new Microbial Conservation Specialist Group marks a first in the history of international conservation and filling a critical gap in ...
New conservation committee led by Applied Microbiology International calls on science community to get on board with microbial conservation
2025-09-12
The team behind a new world-leading conservation committee headed by Applied Microbiology International (AMI) is calling on global scientific and conservation communities to get on board to protect microbial life.
Members of the new IUCN Microbial Conservation Specialist Group (MCSG) have outlined its priorities for its first year and beyond in a paper published in Nature Microbiology.
Earlier this year, global conservation leader, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) officially approved ...