Breakthrough Research Earns Sir Ravinder Maini ‘American Nobel’
By Francis C. Assisi
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New York, September 17, 2003 -- The prestigious Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research -- the “American Nobels” -- that will be conferred September 19 in New York is a signal honor for Indo-British scientist Sir Ravinder Maini at Imperial College, London.
Since 1984, Dr. Maini, along with his colleague Dr. Marc Feldman, have pioneered radically new and better treatments for rheumatoid arthritis - a progressive, painful and crippling disease that affects many millions of people globally.
The 2003 award, announced this week, is for their discovery of anti-cytokine therapy as an effective treatment for rheumatoid arthritis. In a collaboration that has lasted twenty years, the researchers found that a single cytokine, tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha), was the initiator of the whole disease process.
For the same research Maini was earlier honored with a Knighthood from the Queen and the Crafoord Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Science. (His father Sir Amar Maini was knighted in 1957 for public services in East Africa – making the Mainis a rare father-son duo in the annals of knighthood).
Though each Lasker Prize is worth just $50,000, it’s the kudos that makes winning this worthwhile according to Neem Hunt, president of the Lasker Foundation. "It´s mainly the status and prestige value," she said.
"It is a high quality award in terms of prestige," agreed Paul Nurse, president of the Rockefeller University and one of the Award jurors. What´s more, the award is a good predictor of a future Nobel prize, with almost half of its winners going on to receive a Nobel, he says. And he should know, having received both himself.
"I´m absolutely delighted that Drs Feldmann and Maini have been recognized for their frontier work in bringing science to medicine and translating it for the benefit of patients suffering with arthritis and other inflammatory diseases," said Stephen Katz, director of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, Bethesda, Maryland.
Maini and Feldman are, understandably, delighted by news of the Award. "It is a very singular honor, and when you look back at who else has got these prizes, you have to be pleased," said Feldmann. "We are honored and humbled to be included in that club of people who have contributed a lot towards biomedical science."
Stephen Katz, director of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, Bethesda, Maryland, welcomes the award. "I´m absolutely delighted that Drs Feldmann and Maini have been recognized for their frontier work in bringing science to medicine and translating it for the benefit of patients suffering with arthritis and other inflammatory diseases," he said.
Background
In the 1980s Professor Ravinder Maini, until recently director of the Kennedy Rheumatology Research Institute in London, with Professor Marc Feldmann of Imperial College in London, discovered that 12 cytokines (natural chemical messengers), none of which are detectable in normal human joints, are all found at detectable levels in the joints of people suffering arthritis.
Maini and Feldmann went on to make the breakthrough discovery that the abnormal production of all these cytokines is stimulated by TNF. This suggested to them that if the effects of TNF could be blocked then the whole process of abnormal inflammation could be arrested.
The next step was to find ways to try to block the effects of TNF by making a monoclonal antibody against it. A monoclonal antibody is a made-to-order protein which reacts only with its chosen target, in this case TNF, and in doing so inactivates its target. The hope was that such an antibody would reduce the concentrations of inflammatory cytokines in joints.
Tests carried out by Saini and Feldmann showed this to be the case, first in cell cultures and then in animal models. Then in the early 1990s the antibody was successfully tested for the first time in human patients.
In continuing research it has now been shown, in Professor Maini’s own words, that anti-cytokine therapy “is both safe and effective and has proven to be far superior to conventional drug therapy in the treatment of both arthritis and Crohn´s disease (another inflammatory disease, that affects the intestine)”.
As Maini himself remarked “the era of anti-cytokine medicine has just begun.”