Pioneers in anaesthesiology, DNA structure and RNA biology are this year’s Lasker Awards recipients. The annual prize, announced on 11 September, rewards achievements in biomedical research and is often considered a precursor to the Nobel.

John Glen, a veterinarian formerly at the biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca in London, won the clinical award for the discovery of the anesthetic propofol.

Joan Argetsinger Steitz of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, won the achievement award for her work on RNA and for promoting women in science.

And the awardees for basic science included C. David Allis of Rockefeller University in New York City and Michael Grunstein of the University of California Los Angeles, who discovered how chemical modifications to chromosomes can turn genes on and off.

Each category comes with a US$250,000 honorarium.