Classic Lasker

After meeting a young man dying of renal failure, Willem Kolff could not shake the thought that there was a simple solution: remove urea from the blood. Using sausage skin and an enamel tub, Kolff made the rotating drum artificial kidney. This was the beginning of renal hemodialysis, now a widely used intervention for those suffering from kidney failure.

In this 2002 interview, Kolff shares stories from his nearly seven-decade career, which began in pre-war Holland and took him all the way to the University of Utah.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Find the entire 49-minute video here: http://ow.ly/YGji50Nb6oQ

In vitro fertilization has become fairly common, but have you ever stopped to think about the fundamental research that was required to make it possible? Just figuring out how to properly fertilize the eggs in a petri dish took five years. Listen in as 2001 Lasker Laureate Robert G. Edwards tells the story of how he met Patrick Steptoe, his essential collaborator in making IVF a reality, shares the ethical dilemmas they faced, and reflects on the legacy of their decisions.

Read more about the Award: http://ow.ly/k0IF50KhaZx

In this 2002 interview, Lasker Award and Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandel speaks with the then-newly minted Lasker Laureate James Darnell Jr. Darnell won the 2002 Albert Lasker Special Achievement Award in Medical Science for an exceptional career that opened two fields in biology—RNA processing and cytokine signaling—and for his dedication to the development of many creative scientists. Darnell shares his journey from his childhood home in rural Mississippi to training alongside preeminent scientists at the NIH, details how he made his discoveries, and talks about important findings made by other groups.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Find the entire 42-minute interview here: http://ow.ly/36MY50Kgi2e

"I was forty-seven years old before I did anything that people would really look at twice." Janet Rowley's discovery of chromosomal translocations made it possible to diagnose cancer at the molecular level, and her work earned her a Lasker Award. But getting there wasn't easy. In this interview, given before the 1998 Awards, Rowley talks to former NIH Director Francis Collins and shares stories of her life before she made her groundbreaking discoveries. She had to wait nine months to start medical school because the quota for women (3 out of a class of 65) had been filled, she worked part time for twenty years while she raised her four sons, and it took almost ten years before anything noteworthy came out of her research. Through it all, she chose to enjoy what she had instead of getting discouraged. This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity. Find the entire 40-minute interview here: http://ow.ly/ZJrB50Iumei

In this 1996 interview between Lasker Award winner Paul Zamecnik and three-time Emmy Award-winning journalist Richard Cohen, Zamecnik tells us about how he got into basic research as WWII was imminent, about not winning the Nobel prize, and his chance encounters that led him to ask the question: "How do you make a protein, anyway?". Zamecnik was recognized for six decades of brilliant and original science, including the development of antisense DNA, a technology that enables selective inhibition of gene expression and revolutionized biochemistry.

Learn more about Zamecnik's Award-winning work: http://ow.ly/2j0N50IcYNM