Next week, Shapiro will be awarded the Lasker-Koshland Award for Special Achievement in Medical Science. The Lasker Award, known as the \u201cAmerican Nobel,\u201d is this country\u2019s most distinguished honor for researchers in basic and clinical medical sciences. The Special Achievement award, which has been renamed in honor of the late biochemist Daniel Koshland Jr., is given only once every two years to commemorate a life of scientific contribution and service.<\/p>\n
Shapiro will be the 18th recipient of the award and the third woman. In 2008, the late Stanley Falkow, PhD, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford Medicine, received the same award for his work on the molecular basis of microbial pathogenesis. The 2025 awards were announced Sept. 11 by the Lasker Foundation and are to be presented at a ceremony Sept. 19 in New York City.<\/p>\n
\u201cLucy has been described as a force of nature,\u201d said\u00a0Lloyd Minor<\/a>, MD, the Carl and Elizabeth Naumann Professor for the Dean of the School of Medicine and vice president for medical affairs at Stanford University. \u201cI wholeheartedly agree. In her 36 years at Stanford Medicine, she transformed the way biologists think of bacteria and developmental biology; she pioneered a truly interdisciplinary lab that brought together physicists, chemists and biologists; met with multiple heads of state; launched two extraordinarily successful biotech companies; and mentored dozens of students who now lead successful research projects around the world. And she does it with a smile on her face and an engagement with her colleagues that makes everyone feel valued. We are incredibly fortunate to have her as a member of the Stanford Medicine community.\u201d<\/p>\n \n (Photo by Christopher Michel)\n <\/p>\n I had no way of knowing then that the test tubes and cold rooms with which I quickly became familiar would yield information that would be absolutely critical to battle a pandemic nearly six decades later.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014 Lucy Shapiro<\/p>\n Shapiro is stunned by the recognition. \u201cI don\u2019t even know how to answer that,\u201d she responded when asked how she felt when she first learned she would receive the award. \u201cIt was just so shocking. Many of the previous recipients are my heroes \u2014 people who I\u2019ve looked up to my entire scientific career. It means more than I can possibly say to be part of that cadre. It is really the highest honor I can imagine.\u201d<\/p>\n Since her graduate school days, Shapiro has focused on understanding how bacteria compartmentalize proteins and structures that generally lack the intracellular membranes and organelles that more advanced cells (from yeast to human) use for organization. Discoveries made in her lab in the late 1990s overturned the prevailing idea that bacteria were just a \u201cbag of enzymes\u201d by proving that proteins involved in the regulation of the cell cycle travel to the poles of the cell in a dynamic, regulated fashion prior to cell division.\u00a0<\/p>\n She did so by studying a unique bacterium called Caulobacter crescentus that divides asymmetrically to create one stationary, stalked cell and one mobile, flagellated cell that swims away to new locations. This type of cell division is the fundamental basis of stem cell function and the generation of diversity in the living world.<\/p>\n Along the way, Shapiro sought out and cultivated interdisciplinary collaborators at Stanford Medicine and beyond, including McAdams, a former department head of systems engineering at Bell Labs who moved with her to Stanford in 1989 when Shapiro was recruited to be the founding chair of the new Department of Developmental Biology. Together, first in a spare bedroom in their house on the Stanford University campus and then in side-by-side laboratories when McAdams became a faculty member, biologists, geneticists, physicists and electrical engineers rubbed shoulders and drew parallels between genetic feedback networks and electrical circuits. \u201cThis revolutionized our understanding of the complex genetic and molecular interactions that govern how cells grow and divide,\u201d Shapiro said.<\/p>\n \u201cLucy\u2019s emotional intensity and focus, along with her willingness and desire to solve any problem, is inspirational\u201d said W.E. Moerner<\/a>, PhD, the Harry S. Mosher Professor, a professor of chemistry at Stanford University and the 2014 recipient of the Nobel Prize in chemistry for the development of a type of microscopy that enabled the detection of single molecules within a living cell. Shapiro and Moerner used the technique to track the movement of proteins associated with the cell cycle in Caulobacter \u2014 cementing the idea that bacteria actively regulate the location of proteins and DNA during cell division.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople didn\u2019t believe it at first,\u201d Shapiro said. \u201cI had to fight to get those papers published in Science.\u201d<\/p>\n Never one to shrink from unconventional ideas, Shapiro leveraged what she\u2019d learned about bacterial biology in a collaboration with Steve Benkovic, PhD, a chemist at Pennsylvania State University, to explore whether replacing a carbon molecule in the active site of potential antibacterial and antifungal drugs with a boron molecule could lessen toxicity while maintaining efficacy.<\/p>\n \u201cThe boron-based molecules killed the pathogens, while sparing human cells,\u201d Shapiro said.<\/p>\n She and Benkovic obtained the license to this new class of anti-infectives and launched a company called Anacor Inc. Anacor developed the first new antifungal in 50 years and an anti-inflammatory drug effective against eczema \u2014 both of which were approved by the Food and Drug Administration. In 2016, Anacor was sold to Pfizer for $5.2 billion. Shapiro co-founded Boragen, which subsequently merged with AgriMetis to form the agricultural company 5Metis that is designing boron-containing antifungals to protect bananas and rice crops worldwide. She has served on the boards of multiple biotech companies.<\/p>\n \n Lucy Shapiro and her physicist husband Harley McAdams. (Courtesy Lucy Shapiro)\n <\/p>\n Lunching with a purpose<\/p>\n For decades, Shapiro participated in monthly lunches hosted by former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz. During these meetings, Shultz would ask Shapiro, then-Stanford-provost Condoleezza Rice and nuclear nonproliferation expert Sid Drell what they had accomplished (or failed to accomplish) during the previous month, as well as what concerned them the most.<\/p>\n \u201cBeing forced to articulate, and be aware of, existential threats in my area of expertise expanded my concerns from how a cell goes about its business of being a living entity to ones of national policy,\u201d Shapiro said. \u201cI developed a new vision of an integrated world system \u2014 or circuit, if you will \u2014 in which the components were the economy, political national interests and technological developments that were rapidly changing our understanding of global dynamics. Underlying these issues was the specter of climate change that was clearly the elephant in the room.\u201d<\/p>\n The lunches, which began in the mid-1990s, caused Shapiro to contemplate how to respond to challenges facing human health. As a result, she embarked on a three-pronged mission: speak publicly about the rising threats to global health, gain the political visibility and influence to champion the support of basic research, and design and obtain regulatory approval for new anti-infective drugs.<\/p>\n In true Shapiro fashion, she was remarkably successful. Over the years, she spoke with Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev about emerging infectious disease threats; met with then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice during the George W. Bush administration; briefed President Bill Clinton about how the threat of bioterrorism is similar to the threat of the natural emergence of dangerous pathogens; and, in 2019, addressed the Senate Armed Services Committee about the looming threat of a global pandemic. She met with Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, to encourage the collaboration between Stanford University and the University of California, San Francisco, that would become the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and she counseled former California governor Jerry Brown about antibiotic resistance and SARS-CoV-2 and Microsoft founder Bill Gates about boron-containing anti-infectives.<\/p>\n \u201cIf Lucy sees something that is not right, she is not going to sit around and do nothing,\u201d said Peter Kim<\/a>, PhD, the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor in Biochemistry and former president of Merck Research Laboratories. \u201cHer role as a government adviser on bioterrorism and antimicrobial resistance has been remarkable. And the overall breadth of her accomplishments, along with her ability to influence so many different parts of society in such positive ways, is astounding.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s a true citizen scientist who feels responsible for the broader community,\u201d said scientific colleague Jeremy Nathans, MD, PhD, professor of molecular biology and genetics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. \u201cNot just for her own lab, or department, or university but much more broadly. And she understands the consequences of large-scale public misunderstanding of science and how incredibly damaging that is.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Lucy Shapiro receives the National Medal of Science from President Barack Obama in 2013.\n <\/p>\n Early days<\/p>\n Shapiro graduated from Brooklyn College in 1962 with a bachelor\u2019s in fine arts and a minor in biology. She launched into graduate school under the auspices of Shedlovsky and biochemist Jerry Hurwitz, PhD, first at New York University where she became part of the \u201cjungle biochemists,\u201d then at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. \u201cThey were rough, competitive, demanding and exquisitely able chemists. And now I was one of them,\u201d Shapiro recalled in an unpublished reflection.<\/p>\n As a graduate student, Shapiro was challenged to determine how a bacterial virus that used RNA as its sole genetic material was able to hijack an infected bacterial cell and make numerous copies of itself. Her PhD thesis was the discovery of an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase encoded by a virus that infects the bacterium E. coli. Learning that RNA could be stable enough to serve as a primary genetic code, rather than just a messenger to carry instructions from DNA to the cell\u2019s protein-making machinery, was a key step in the development of today\u2019s mRNA vaccines.<\/p>\n \u201cI had no way of knowing then that the test tubes and cold rooms with which I quickly became familiar would yield information that would be absolutely critical to battle a pandemic nearly six decades later,\u201d Shapiro said.<\/p>\n Within 10 years of graduating, Shapiro rose to lead the department of molecular biology at Albert Einstein \u2014 the first woman to hold a department chair at the school.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cLucy burst like a bolt of lightning upon the scientific scene,\u201d said colleague Carol Gross, PhD, professor of cell and tissue biology at UCSF. \u201cAlthough her PhD thesis was purely biochemistry and almost all her coursework was in chemistry or physical chemistry, when faced with starting her own laboratory, Lucy determined that the most significant question she could address was in developmental biology.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Caulobacter crescentus was an obscure, understudied bacterium in a time when the vast majority of biologists were using E. coli \u2014 a common gut bacterium that divides symmetrically \u2014 as a model system. But Caulobacter was ideal for the questions Shapiro wanted to address \u2014 namely, how a linear DNA genome gives rise to a three-dimensional cell with specific architecture and function. The topic was incredibly daunting, but Shapiro had confidence in her \u201chydrogen atom\u201d (the simplest possible unit of study that, when understood, could shed light on much more complex systems).<\/p>\n \u201cAt scientific meetings, where every session focused on E. coli, Lucy and I took to calling ourselves the \u2018un-colis\u2019 as a nod to the popular ad for 7 Up as the \u2018un-cola,’\u201d said Richard Losick, PhD, a professor of\u00a0biology\u00a0at\u00a0Harvard University\u00a0and a\u00a0Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Losick was also studying a little-known bacteria called Bacillus subtilis.<\/p>\n \u201cFor a long time our work was largely ignored. But her remarkable charisma convinced the planet to pay attention to her as she developed Caulobacter into an excellent model for research. And I came along for the ride,\u201d Losick said. \u201cIt seems like she can do anything she sets her mind to. It\u2019s amazing. This award is the crowning recognition for Lucy\u2019s career. It\u2019s a category that recognizes broad contributions to science and the world. It is a perfect fit for her.\u201d<\/p>\n After 19 years at Albert Einstein, Shapiro moved to Columbia University as professor and chair of microbiology and immunology. She lasted three years before yielding to Stanford Medicine\u2019s repeated offers to chair its new Department of Developmental Biology. The opportunity to recruit the best of the best to the new department was too appealing to turn down. At Stanford Medicine, Shapiro set about assembling a cadre of researchers studying similar questions in model organisms from bacteria to mammals.<\/p>\n A woman in science<\/p>\n Once again the first woman to chair a department at a school of medicine, Shapiro was used to the experience. Jarring moments during her early career \u2014 being heckled during scientific presentations and ostracized in classes \u2014 had made it clear that women face particular challenges when entering male-dominated fields.<\/p>\n \u201cMore than any other woman of her time, Lucy showed that women could compete in all aspects of the scientific enterprise at the level of their male counterparts, even without a male scientist partner to pave the way for her,\u201d Gross said. \u201cAt a time when very few women were scientists, much less in leadership positions, Lucy\u2019s brilliance, foresight and determination showed what is possible, paving the way for others to follow.\u201d<\/p>\n More than any other woman of her time, Lucy showed that women could compete in all aspects of the scientific enterprise at the level of their male counterparts.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014 Carol Gross\n <\/p>\n Her determination included helping young scientists facing similar hurdles.<\/p>\n![\"Lucy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/lucy-shapiro-microscope.png\")
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