Albert Lasker
Basic Medical Research Award

Acceptance remarks by Jeffrey Friedman

It is a profound honor to receive this year's Lasker Prize for Basic research. The significance of this prize is heightened by the ground breaking achievements of the prior recipients who are among the greatest contributors to medical science and the depth of the esteem in which each of the committee members is held. I would also like to thank the many people who have helped me, and a list of these people's names are included in my full acknowledgements in the Lasker brochure.

In 1903 Theodore Roosevelt wrote, "Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing." While there is wisdom in this statement, I have come to conclude that it fails to capture that which motivates me. For me the best prize was having had the chance to make a discovery.

As scientists we are the instruments of a wave of new knowledge that passes through of us from the past and into the future. The wave of knowledge of which my research is a part began with the realization of the French chemist Lavoisier in the 18th Century that living organisms are subject to the basic laws of physics and chemistry, the formulation of the first law of thermodynamics by Joule and Meyer, passes through Hetherington and Ranson two great neuro-anatomists and Gordon Kennedy and Romaine Hervey two physiologists of the 20th century who suggested that fat tissue generated signals that regulated body weight. In a beautiful set of experiments for which he to is being recognized, Doug Coleman of the Jackson laboratory correctly predicted that this factor was encoded by the mouse ob gene.

This wave of new knowledge coursed briefly through me highlighted by a singular moment when the presence and absence of a few regions of intensity on an XRay revealed the answer to a simple question that had perplexed scientists since Lavoisier, How do biologic systems count calories? Or more precisely how does Nature monitor the number of calories stored by fat. We now know that this is achieved by the production of a hormone by fat tissue and it was the realization that the amount of body fat is regulated by this hormone, leptin, that led me to be recognized today . This moment of discovery was exhilarating. Gazing upon the Xray was also humbling because it revealed the beauty and power and majesty of nature, which had solved the problem of counting calories so elegantly and simply. The only moments in my life that compared to this were when I was married and when I heard my twin daughters cry for the first time as they were delivered.

This wave of knowledge that began with Laviosier and passed through Doug then me will continue into a future that I cannot clearly see but which others undoubtedly can or will. This future puts forth the promise that in time we will understand how complex behaviors such as feeding are regulated at the cellular and the molecular level.

The realization that leptin and other molecules control feeding behavior and body weight show that obesity is not a personal choice. It is my hope and expectation that the realization that obesity has a biologic basis will not only lead to new treatments but also lead to a greater sense of understanding for the obese. It is simplistic to imagine that we can consciously control all of our basic drives , drives that have been honed by evolution for countless millennia.

As a child, it would have been inconceivable to me that I would ever have my name listed with the previous recipients of this award and it is the deepest of honors. The depth of this occasion is completed by the presence of my friends, colleagues and family in particular my wife Lily and my daughters Nathalie and Alexandra.