Sept. 14 (Bloomberg) -- One was the first to clone animals, another turned ordinary skin into stem cells that can form any cell in the body, and a third used his power and money to limit public smoking and fund health research.

John Gurdon of Cambridge University in England, Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg are among six winners of the 2009 Lasker Awards for accomplishments in medical research and public service. Three scientists who helped develop the cancer drug Gleevec, sold by Novartis AG, of Basel, Switzerland, were also honored. That treatment turned a type of leukemia, or blood cancer, from a killer into a treatable condition.

The work by Gurdon in the late 1950s and Yamanaka since 2006 helped start and transform the field of stem cell research, said Maria Freire, president of the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation. Gurdon’s work showed that the nucleus of every cell retains a latent ability to become any other cell type and Yamanaka showed how that capacity can be unleashed, Freire said in a Sept. 11 telephone interview.

“These two pieces of research allow us to understand different aspects of stem cells,” she said. “I think it could lead to personalized replacement therapy to fix cells or damaged tissue.”

The awards include a cash prize of $250,000 for each category and often preview the Nobel Prize. In the 63-year history of the Lasker prizes, 76 winners also have won a Nobel. The Lasker Foundation was created in 1942 by advertising executive Albert Lasker and his wife Mary, a health advocate.

Basic Research

Gurdon and Yamanaka share the award for the category of basic medical research. In the late 1950s, Gurdon, now 76, overturned conventional wisdom by showing that cell development isn’t always a one-way process in which cells go from embryo cells, able to become any other cell type, to unchangeable cells like muscle or nerve cells.

“The prevailing thought was that as cell differentiate, they lose their ability to generate other cells of any kind,” Gurdon said in a Sept. 11 telephone interview.

Gurdon took cells from an adult frog’s gut, inserted the nucleus into an egg cell whose own nucleus had been removed, and created a tadpole with the genetic characteristics of the original frog. His work showed that the adult cells retained the ability to become other cells and that the egg had the power to reawaken those properties. It paved the way in 1996 for the cloning of Dolly the sheep and, 10 years later, for Yamanaka’s work.

Dolly Without Eggs

By adding the right genes to an adult skin cell, and without using an egg, Yamanaka accomplished what Gurdon had done in frogs and Scottish researcher Ian Wilmut did in Dolly, Gurdon said.

“We did it by transferring the nucleus of a cell,” Gurdon said. “Amazingly, he does it by adding genes to the cells and some of them go back to being embryo cells.”

After his experiment, Gurdon thought a cloning process might eventually succeed in mammals “but I did not expect it would be possible to do what Yamanaka did.”

Scores of laboratories across the world have been able to adopt the technique and work to improve it because of its simplicity, Yamanaka said in a telephone interview yesterday.

“Everyone can do it,” he said. “You don’t have to have human embryos and you can make stem cells directly from patients.”

Technology Used

While he can’t predict when his method might lead to cells that can treat patients, several companies are now using the technology to develop and test drugs, Yamanaka said. He is the director of the Center for Induced Pluripotent Stem (IPS) Cell Research and Applications at Kyoto University and also a senior investigator at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease in San Francisco.

Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, was awarded the Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service for making public health a top priority as mayor of New York and for using his personal wealth to advance health research. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health at his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, is named in his honor.

As mayor, Bloomberg pushed through measures banning smoking in restaurants, bars and other public places, imposed higher taxes on cigarettes and sponsored an antismoking media campaign. The result, said the Lasker Foundation, is that 300,000 fewer New Yorkers smoke than in 2002, when Bloomberg took office.

Bloomberg also was credited by the Lasker judges for taking actions to slash the use of trans-fats, the artery-clogging fats used in many fried and processed foods, and for advocating against the easy availability of handguns.

Understanding Impact

“Michael Bloomberg understood the impact of second-hand smoking on workers, of smoking on individuals, of trans-fats on heart conditions and obesity,” Freire said. “It highlights the courage of an individual to look at scientific data and make policies based on the data for the betterment of the health of people.”

A third award, for clinical medical research went to Brian Druker, a researcher at Oregon Health and Science University, Nicholas Lydon, a scientist formerly with Novartis, and Charles Sawyers of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

Work by Druker and Lydon led to the development of Gleevec, sold by and Sawyer’s research uncovered ways to overcome the resistance that some patients develop to Gleevec. The drug, which had $3.7 billion in sales in 2008, is used to treat blood cancers and has turned one, chronic myelogenous leukemia, from a fatal disease to a treatable one, Freire said.

Before Gleevec, a patient with this leukemia “had a death sentence,” she said. “Now they have the ability to live with the disease as you do with diabetes or high blood pressure.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Rob Waters in San Francisco at rwaters5@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 14, 2009 00:59 EDT