Wolf Prize for Medicine: Winners by Year

Award years

• 2025

  • Pamela J. Bjorkman

    For pioneering innovative strategies to overcome viral defenses through novel antibody-focused approaches.

• 2024

  • Botond Roska, José-Alain Sahel

    for sight-saving and vision restoration to blind people using optogenetics.

• 2023

  • Daniel J. Drucker

    for pioneering work in elucidating the mechanisms and therapeutic potential of enteroendocrine hormones.

• 2021

  • Adrian Krainer

    for his fundamental mechanistic discoveries on RNA splicing leading to a world’s first treatment for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).

  • Joan A. Steitz

    for ground-breaking discoveries on RNA processing and its function.

  • Lynne E. Maquat

    For discovering a mechanism that destroys mutant mRNA in cells – non-sense mediated mRNA decay (NMD).

• 2020

  • Emmanuelle Charpentier

    for deciphering and repurposing the bacterial CRISPR/Cas9 immune system for genome editing.

  • Jennifer A. Doudna

    for revealing the medicine-revolutionizing mechanism of bacterial immunity via RNA-guided genome editing.

• 2019

  • Jeffrey M. Friedman

    for the identification of Leptin, a new endocrine system regulating body weight.

• 2017

  • James P. Allison

    for sparking a revolution in cancer therapy through (his) discovery of immune checkpoint blockade.

• 2016

  • C. Ronald Kahn

    for pioneering studies defining insulin signaling and its alterations in disease.

  • Lewis C. Cantley

    for discovery of phosphoinositide-3 kinases and their roles in physiology and disease.

• 2015

  • Jeffrey Ravetch, John Kappler, Philippa Marrack

    for advancing the understanding of the molecular basis of the immune response.

• 2014

  • Gary Ruvkun, Victor Ambros

    for The discovery of microRNA as central regulators of gene expression in health and disease.

  • Nahum Sonenberg

    for the discovery of the key protein regulators of the protein synthesis machinery.

• 2012

  • Ronald M. Evans

    for discovering the gene superfamily encoding nuclear receptors and elucidating the mechanism of action of this class of receptors.

• 2011

  • Rudolf Jaenisch

    For demonstration that iPS cells can be used to cure genetic disease in a mammal, thus establishing their therapeutic potential.

  • Shinya Yamanaka

    for the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) from skin cells.

• 2010

  • Axel Ullrich

    for his pioneering contributions to the discovery and characterization of human proto-onco-genes and the development of novel cancer therapies.

• 2008/2009

  • Aharon Razin, Howard Cedar

    for their fundamental contributions to our understanding of the role of DNA methylation in the control of gene expression.

• 2005

  • Alexander Levitzki

    for pioneering signal transduction therapy and for developing tyrosine kinase inhibitors as effective agents against cancer and a range of other diseases.

  • Tony Pawson

    for his discovery of protein domains essential for mediating protein-protein interactions in cellular signaling pathways, and the insights this research has provided into cancer.

  • Anthony R. Hunter

    for the discovery of protein kinases that phosphorylate tyrosine residues in proteins, critical for the regulation of a wide variety of cellular events, including malignant transformation.

• 2004

  • Robert A. Weinberg

    for his discovery that cancer cells including human tumor cells, carry somatically mutated genes-oncogenes that operate to drive their malignant proliferation.

  • Roger Y. Tsien

    for his seminal contribution to the design and biological application of novel fluorescent and photolabile molecules to analyze and perturb cell signal transduction.

• 2002/2003

  • Mario R. Capecchi

    for their contribution to the development of gene-targeting, enabling elucidation of gene function in mice.

  • Oliver Smithies, Ralph L. Brinster

    for the development of procedures to manipulate mouse ova and embryos, which has enabled transgenesis and its applications in mice.

• 2001

  • Alexander Varshavsky, Avram Hershko

    for the discovery of the ubiquitin system of intracellular protein degradation and the crucial functions of this system in cellular regulation.

• 1999

  • Eric R. Kandel

    for the elucidation of the organismic, cellular and molecular mechanisms whereby short term memory is converted to a long term form.

• 1998

  • Michael Sela, Ruth Arnon

    for their major discoveries in the field of immunology.

• 1997

  • Mary F. Lyon

    for her hypothesis concerning the random inactivation of X-chromosomes in mammals.

• 1995/1996

  • Stanley B. Prusiner

    for discovering prions, new class of pathogens that cause important neurodegenerative disease by inducing changes in protein structute.

• 1994/1995

  • Michael Berridge, Yasutomi Nishizuka

    for their discoveries concerning cellular transmembrane signalling involving phospholipids and calcium.

• 1992

  • M. Judah Folkman

    for his discoveries which originated the concept and developed the field of angiogenesis research.

• 1991

  • Seymour Benzer

    for having generated a new field of molecular neurogenetics by his pioneering research on the dissection of the nervous system and behavior by gene mutations.

• 1990

  • Maclyn McCarty

    for his part in the demonstration that the transforming factor in bacteria is due to deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and the concomitant discovery that the genetic material is composed of DNA.

• 1989

  • Edward B. Lewis

    for his demonstration and exploration of the genetic control of the development of body segments by homeotic genes.

  • John B. Gurdon

    for his introduction of the xenopus oocyte into molecular biology and his demonstration that the nucleus of a differentiated cell and of the egg differ in expression but not in the content of genetic material.

• 1988

  • Elizabeth F. Neufeld, Henri G. Hers

    for the biochemical elucidation of lysosomal storage diseases and the resulting contributions to biology, pathology, prenatal diagnosis, and therapeutics.

• 1987

  • Meir Wilchek, Pedro Cuatrecasas

    for the invention and development of affinity chromatography and its applications to biomedical sciences.

• 1986

  • Osamu Hayaishi

    for the discovery of the oxygenase enzymes and elucidation of their structure and biological importance.

• 1984/1985

  • Donald F. Steiner

    for discoveries concerning the biosynthesis and processing of insulin which have had profound implications for basic biology and clinical medicine.

• 1982

  • James W. Black

    for developing agents which block beta adrenergic and histamine receptors.

  • Jean-Pierre Changeux

    for the isolation, purification and characterization of the acetylcholine receptor.

  • Solomon H. Snyder

    for the development of the ways to label neurotransmitter receptors, which provide tools to describe their properties.

• 1981

  • Barbara McClintock

    for her imaginative and important contributions to our understanding of chromosome structure behavior and function, and for her identification and description of transposable genetic (mobile) elements.

  • Stanley N. Cohen

    for his concepts underlying genetic engineering; for constructing a biologically functional hybrid plasmid, and for achieving actual expression of a foreign gene implanted in E. Coli by the recombinant DNA method.

• 1980

  • César Milstein, James L. Gowans, Leo Sachs

    for their contributions to knowledge of the function and disfunction of the body cells through their studies on the immunological role of the lymphocytes, the development of specific antibodies and the elucidation of mechanisms governing the control and differentiation of normal and cancer cells.

• 1979

  • Arvid Carlsson

    for his work which established the role of dopamine as a neurotransmitter.

  • Oleh Hornykiewicz

    for opening a new approach in the control of Parkinson's disease by L-Dopa.

  • Roger Wolcott Sperry

    for his studies on the functional differentiation of the right and left hemispheres of the brain.

• 1978

  • George D. Snell

    for discovery of H-2 antigens, which codes for major transplantation antigens and the onset of the immune response.

  • Jean Dausset

    for discovering the HL-A system, the major histocompatibility complex in man and its primordial role in organ transplantation.

  • Jon J. van Rood

    for his contribution to the understanding of the complexity of the HL-A system in man and its implications in transplantation and in disease.