The scientist of the Bay region wins the major prize, expresses deep concerns concerning the health cuts of the Trump administration

A researcher from the Bay region received the equivalent of the science from a Hollywood Oscar on Saturday for a surprising transformative discovery on multiple sclerosis This offers the hope of freeing people with chronic disease from its debilitating effects.

UC Professor of UC San Francisco, Dr. Stephen Hauser, who shared with a Harvard teacher a breakthrough of $ 3 million for his research on MS and the development of pioneering treatment, “overthrew scientific consensus on the MEV mechanism” and played a decisive role in the revolution of the doctors’ approach to the joint disease.

The discovery of Hauser about MS, a neurological disease affecting nearly a million Americans, came on a ferry trip to British Columbia after working for decades to disentangle the causes of ME and find possible treatments.

“When I started – 47 years ago now – this quest to successfully understand and treat the MS, the prospects for patients whose MS was beginning was a serious handicap within 15 years, or worse,” said Hauser. “For patients who start their trip to MS now, I think they can be optimistic that life without disability is achievable.”

During this 1997 ferry journey from Vancouver to the island of Vancouver, a remark of a colleague led Hauser to laboratory surveys which upset the conviction of scientists that the white type T globules forged most of the neurological damage to MS. On the ship moving towards a meeting in the capital of British Columbia Victoria, Claude Genain, a postdoctoral researcher in the Hauser laboratory, suggested that perhaps the B-type B white cells were the main culprit. Hauser’s confirmation has led to pioneering treatment using a medication to kill B cells.

Pharmacotherapy blocks almost all of the inflammation gusts that cause sep attacks, so after a few years of treatment, if started early enough, “patients have less than one sep attack per life,” said Hauser. “The MS in relapse is really in the rear view mirror.”

However, researchers have discovered that slow neurological degeneration occurs in the disease, partially independent of inflammation. The antibody -based drug slows down this process by around 40% in the first cases of SE, and around 30% at subsequent stages, said Hauser. “We hope that if we can treat very, very early on, it can stop it entirely,” he said.

Hauser, director of the WEUL Institute for Neurosciences of the UCSF, received its revolutionary prize as well as the National United States Institutes for Health – a main donor of its work for decades – faces billions of dollars in reduction and the dismissal of more than 1,000 leaders and their programs. A trial of the Federal Court posted this week in Massachusetts this week by the American Public Health Association and others accused the federal government of an “reckless and illegal purge” which saw hundreds of research projects funded by the NIH “suddenly canceled”. Musk in a publication of social networks of February called the amount that universities spend to administer the NIH subsidies “a scam”.

At the Weill Institute, which has received $ 1 billion in NIH since the opening in 2016, Hauser and his team investigated the links between viruses and migraine, Lou Gehrig and Parkinson’s disease, to offer new treatments. They also study new ways of fighting depression, autism, Alzheimer’s disease, psychosis, dependence and cerebral vascular accidents, as well as the improvement in MS treatments.

“It will be the golden age of medicine in the next generation and earlier if we are able to keep the course,” said Hauser. “It is a fragile ecosystem and if a piece weakens, the gears can separate.”

Hauser worries about the targeting of the Trump administration of NIH, young scientists can turn away from medical research, progress in health care in the knee for the decades to come.

“I feel worried about young people who just start careers in medical sciences and receive calls to do other things to much higher wages every week,” said Hauser. “It could have generational consequences.”

The sharing of the Percée de Vie de la sciences de la sciences with Hauser was Professor Alberto Ascherio of the University of Harvard, who discovered that the infection by the generalized Epstein-Barr virus was necessary to obtain the MS. Ascherio’s work “opens the possibility of treating MP with antiviral drugs” and the development of an Epstein-Barr vaccine that could prevent the MP, said the spokesperson for the revolutionary price. The large-scale science program was founded by Silicon Valley tops, including the co-founder of Google, Sergey Brin, and the pediatrician and philanthrope Priscilla Chan and her husband, the meta-PDG Mark Zuckerberg.

Four other researchers from the Bay region have won related prices under the aegis of the revolutionary prize.

The associate professor of the University of Stanford, Jeongwan Haah, won one of the three new horizons in physics, for his work at the intersection of mathematics and quantum physics.

Rebecca Jensen-Clem, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics of the UC Santa Cruz, shared a New Horizons in Physics Award with two other researchers, for having demonstrated new techniques to find tiny planets well outside our solar system.

Another member of Stanford’s faculty, the assistant professor of mathematics, Si-USing Lee, won one of the three Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers, for his contributions to an advanced mathematical theory.

The UC Berkeley has also won this year’s awards, the postdoctoral scholarship holder Ewin Tang has awarded a Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers prize for its quantum computer work.

Originally published: April 5, 2025 at 3.30 p.m.