Two physicists who played a key role in advancing a theory that describes the basis of all matter and a pair of immunologists who developed a pioneering cancer therapy that is currently being investigated as a treatment for autoimmune disease are among the winners of the most lucrative prize in science.
Founded in 2012, the Breakthrough prize is the world’s largest international science prize, with the winners of the five main awards – three in life sciences, one in fundamental physics, and one in mathematics – each receiving a $3m (£2.4m) prize
Prof John Cardy, an emeritus fellow at the University of Oxford, shares this year’s physics prize with Alexander Zamolodchikov for their contributions to statistical physics and quantum field theory – a theoretical framework that describes how different states of matter may be described by fluctuating fields, analogous to magnetic and electric fields.
The mathematical formulas they developed and ideas they have advanced have improved scientific understanding of the properties of different materials and how they transition between different states, as well as predicting how they are likely to behave in different circumstances, with far-reaching applications in various branches of physics and mathematics, from black holes to superconductors.
“They also help to give us an understanding of the dynamical processes that may be going on in things like quantum entanglement, which is very important for quantum computing,” Cardy said.
A former mountaineer and a keen oil painter, Cardy said an appreciation of beauty underpinned all of his interests, whether that was the beauty of mountains or of mathematical equations. “It’s an idea that’s very important to me,” he said.
Among the winners of the prizes for life sciences are Carl June and Michel Sadelain, who pioneered the development of genetically engineered immune cells designed to recognise and destroy an individual’s cancer. Known as Car T-cells, these “living drugs” are being investigated as a potential treatment for severe lupus, an autoimmune disease that can cause life-threatening damage to the heart, lungs, brain and kidneys.
Sadelain said the idea of giving T-cells an “intelligence boost” by genetically instructing them about which cells to target had first occurred to him as a PhD student, “based on the realisation that vaccines aren’t always efficacious, they’re not always fast enough, and above all in cancer, they’re not strong enough to overcome the cancer.
“To me [current Car T-cells] are a prototype for what I hope will be a large family of medicines that we call living drugs. They are immune cells that are genetically targeted and programmed to perform a task of our choosing,” he said.
Also taking prizes for life sciences are a team that has played a key role in unpicking the genetics of Parkinson’s disease and a trio of scientists based at Vertex Pharmaceuticals in Massachusetts, US, who identified a combination of drugs that repair the defective chloride channel protein in patients with cystic fibrosis.
Prof Andrew Singleton, whose discovery that mutations in a gene called LRRK2 underpin some of the neuronal damage that occurs in patients with Parkinson’s, described himself as an optimist who had always been driven by the belief that his research would someday lead to a treatment – even if he was “wrong 99.9% of the time”. A drug that targets the LRRK2 protein is being tested in late stage clinical trials.
The mathematics prize went to Prof Simon Brendle at Columbia University in New York for his transformative contributions to differential geometry – a discipline that studies the geometry of smooth shapes and spaces.
“The work of these laureates is very impressive – whether it’s exploring abstract ideas or unraveling the causes of human diseases and producing effective treatments that impact millions of lives,” said Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, two of the founding sponsors of the Breakthrough prize.
