On Sept. 9, 2013, Genentech announced that Richard Scheller, Ph.D., Executive VP, Research and Early Development, was a winner of the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, given annually to a scientist whose fundamental investigations have provided techniques, information or concepts contributing to the elimination of major causes of disability and death.

Scheller is currently executive vice president for research and early development at Genentech, a large medical biotechnology firm in California.

The Lasker Award is often called the “American Nobel,” and 83 winners have gone on to win a Nobel Prize. Scheller shared the award with Thomas C. Südhof of Stanford University. He donated his portion of the $250,000 prize to the Wildlife Conservation Network, which supports “entrepreneurial conservationists.”

The award recognized Scheller’s and Südhof’s research into the way chemicals move between neurons, the nerve cells that communicate with each other. Neurons use chemicals to communicate whenever one throws a ball, hears a Beethoven string quartet or remembers a face.

Both scientists focused on the tiny containers, called vesicles, that hold these neurotransmitters until the release is triggered. Then the transmitters can cross a tiny gap and stimulate a neighboring neuron.