Awards Honor Ulcer, Immune System Studies

Researchers who studied the immune system and bacterial ulcers won Albert Lasker awards on Monday, honors that can presage the Nobel Prize.

Dr. Barry J. Marshall of the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville discovered that bacteria cause ulcers, an idea that met with widespread skepticism but eventually changed ulcer treatment. It opened the door to treating peptic ulcer disease effectively with antibiotics. He won the $25,000 clinical medical research award.

Marshall’s idea that Helicobacter pylori bacterium causes ulcers, announced in 1983, challenged half a century of belief that ulcers were caused by stress and too much stomach acid. He experimented upon himself by swallowing a sample of the bacterium and getting a stomach biopsy.

The award for basic medical research was shared by five scientists who will receive $10,000 each. They worked for 30 years establishing how the body’s T-cells--infection-fighting white blood cells--recognize foreign proteins.

The five scientists are Peter C. Doherty of St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tenn.; Dr. Rolf M. Zinkernagel of the Institute of Experimental Immunology in Switzerland; Dr. Emil R. Unanue of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis; Dr. Jack L. Strominger of Harvard University, and Don C. Wiley of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in New York and Harvard.

Their work has been used to fight AIDS, other viral infections and cancer, and to create drugs to prevent the rejection of transplanted organs.

The $25,000 Lasker public service award will go to Republican Sen. Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon for “outstanding leadership in support of biomedical research.”

This is the 50th anniversary of the research awards.