The Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards are the most prestigious and coveted awards presented in the United States for biomedical research. They have come to be known as "America's Nobels". They were inaugurated in the years following World War II by philanthropists Albert and Mary Woodard Lasker.

The Lasker Awards focus keen attention each year on an elite community of remarkable basic and clinical scientists whose work has been seminal to understanding disease and the human being's capacity to overcome it.

2002 winners : James E. Rothman and Randy W. Schekman
"For discoveries revealing the universal machinery that orchestrates the budding and fusion of membrane vesicles - a process essential to organelle formation, nutrient uptake, and secretion of hormones and neurotransmitters".

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The Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research

2002 winners : Willem J. Kolff and Belding H. Scribner
"For the development of renal hemodialysis, which changed kidney failure from a fatal to a treatable disease, prolonging the useful lives of millions of patients".

The Albert Lasker Award for Special Achievement in Medical Research

2002 winners : James E. Darnell for an exceptional career in biomedical science during which he opened two fields in biology - RNA processing and cytokine signaling - and fostered the development of many creative scientists.