Predictions for who might win this year’s Nobel Prizes are pouring in, and several local Philadelphia researchers are on the list, writes Alison McCook for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
One of the contenders is Penn’s Carl June, the pioneer of a genetic engineering technique CAR-T and the winner of the Breakthrough Prize – dubbed the “Oscars of science.” This technique has revolutionized the treatment of some blood cancers. The first child treated with CAR-T in 2012 at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia was Emily Whitehead. Then a six-year-old, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Now she has recently enrolled at Penn as an undergraduate student.
Another Penn researcher who is on this year’s shortlist is Virginia Man-Yee Lee, a professor of Alzheimer’s research and director of Penn’s Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research. Her work with brain diseases marked by “misfolded” proteins, including Alzheimer’s, ALS, and Parkinson’s, already won her the Breakthrough Prize in 2019.
Professors of physics Charles Kane and Eugene Mele are local contenders for the Nobel Prize in physics. They are being considered for their work predicting the existence of a wafer-thin material for possible use in future generations of fast computers.
Read more about the possible contenders for Nobel Prizes in The Philadelphia Inquirer.
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