Karl Deisseroth, the Stanford University bioengineer best known for developing the tissue-clearing technique CLARITY and his contributions to optogenetics, has won the 2015 Lurie Prize in Biomedical Sciences, awarded this month by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The prize, given each year to a promising scientist under age 52, comes with a $100,000 honorarium.
Optogenetics uses light to control neurons which have been genetically sensitised to light. The method is a neuromodulation technique employed in neuroscience, and it draws on techniques from optics and genetics to control and monitor the activities of individual neurons in living tissue—even within freely-moving animals—and to precisely measure the effects of those manipulations in real-time.
What excites neuroscientists about optogenetics is control over defined events within defined cell types at defined times. This is a level of precision that is critical to furthering biological understanding.
With the novel CLARITY technique, the method involves pumping tissue-clearing reagents through an animal’s circulatory system removes lipids and leaves the remaining tissues practically see-through. The biggest application is with virology. Here the method will allow scientists to look at how viruses cross the vasculature and enter the cells.
“Karl Deisseroth has opened exciting new fields of scientific endeavor that transform how we view and understand the brain,” Charles Sanders, chair of the Foundation for the NIH, said in a statement. “This research provides great hope to understand biology at a deeper level.”
Deisseroth will be presented with the prize May 20 at a special even to be held in Washington, DC.
