Jeremy NATHANS - 2024

2024 WLA Prize Laureates

The WLA Prize aims to recognize and support eminent researchers and technologists worldwide for their contributions to science.

For discovering the genes, regulation and plasticity underlying human color vision and elucidating disease mechanisms that lead to blindness.

Jeremy NATHANS

The 2024 WLA Prize Laureate in Life Science or Medicine

Professor,
Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, and Department of Neuroscience,
Samuel Theobald Professor, Wilmer Eye Institute (Department of Ophthalmology)
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Investigator
Howard Hughes Medical Institute

About the Laureate

Jeremy Nathans is a Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Neuroscience, and Ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He attended the Baltimore City Public Schools, received his undergraduate education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, obtained M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the Stanford University School of Medicine, and conducted postdoctoral research at Genentech. As a starting doctoral student, Nathans heard a pair of lectures on vertebrate photoreceptors that deeply impressed him with the beauty of the visual system. That sense of awe has only deepened with the passage of time.

At Stanford, Nathans isolated the genes coding for the human light receptors, work that revealed the first sequences of G-protein coupled receptors and that led to the elucidation of the molecular basis of inherited variation in color vision. At Johns Hopkins, Nathans, together with his students, have defined fundamental mechanisms of retinal development, function, and disease. In its work on retinal disease, the Nathans laboratory determined the mechanistic basis of the most common form of autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa, the two most common early-onset forms of macular degeneration, and the retinal vascular disorders Norrie disease and familial exudative vitreoretinopathy. Nathans and his students have used a wide variety of experimental approaches, including human and mouse genetics, biochemistry, cell biology, computational genomics, and structural biology. The current focus of the Nathans laboratory is on vascular biology, with a special emphasis on the blood-retina barrier and the blood-brain barrier.

Profile

Education

1987, Postdoctoral fellow, Genentech
1987, M.D., Stanford University School of Medicine
1985, Ph.D., Biochemistry, Stanford University School of Medicine
1979, B.S., Life Sciences, and Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Professional Experience

1988-1992, Assistant Professor, Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics,Department of Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
1988-1996, Assistant Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
1992-1996, Associate Professor, Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics,Department of Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
1993-1996, Associate Professor, Department of Ophthalmology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
1996-Present, Professor, Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Department of Neuroscience, Department of Ophthalmology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
1997-Present, Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Major Awards and Honors

1986, Newcomb–Cleveland Prize, American Association for the Advancement of Science 1987, Initiatives in Research Award, National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A.
1995, Young Investigator Award, Society for Neuroscience
1996, Member, National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A.
2003,2010,2016, Teacher of the Year, Graduate Student Association, Johns Hopkins Medical School
2008, Champalimaud Award for Vision Research, (shared with King-Wai Yau)
2009, Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
2011, Member, National Academy of Medicine (formerly, Institute of Medicine), U.S.A.
2019, Helen Keller Prize in Vision Research (shared with King-Wai Yau)
2020, Benjamin Franklin Medal in the Life Sciences, Franklin Institute
2022, Mechthild Esser Nemmers Prize in Medical Science, Northwestern University

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