A coveted research award that comes with a $250,000 prize is going to a scientist who helped uncover a protein's role in the human body's immune defenses.
Biochemist Zhijian "James" Chen, director of the Inflammation Research Center and a professor of molecular biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, has won one of this year's Lasker Awards — biomedical-research prizes often called the "American Nobels."
