The Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) is awarding its highest honor, the Award for Excellence in Molecular Diagnostics, to Carol Greider, distinguished professor of molecular, cell, and developmental biology at UC Santa Cruz.
The award recognizes Greider for her pioneering work in telomere research, for which she shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Telomeres are critical structures that maintain the ends of chromosomes, and telomere shortening is associated with aging and disease. Greider’s achievements include the discovery of telomerase, the enzyme that maintains telomere length. She studies the roles that telomeres and telomerase play in cancer and age-related degenerative diseases.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, which she shared with Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack Szostak, Greider was awarded the 2006 Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Inventors, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. She is a Foreign Member of both the Royal Academy of Medicine of Catalonia and the Royal Spanish Academy of Sciences. Her many other honors include the Lila Gruber Cancer Research Award; Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences; Dickson Prize in Medicine; Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize; and the American Society for Women in Science - Pinnacle Award.
Greider will accept the Award for Excellence in November during the AMP 2022 Annual Meeting & Expo in Phoenix, where she will deliver a special lecture on “Telomeres, Telomerase and Disease.”
