The Gairdner Foundation has announced that Stuart H. Orkin, MD, is one of the 2022 Canada Gairdner Award laureates for seminal discoveries and contributions to biomedical science.
Orkin, the David G. Nathan Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center and Harvard Medical School, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, was recognized for the discovery of the molecular mechanism responsible for the switch from fetal to adult hemoglobin gene expression during human development and translating that knowledge into a novel treatment for the hemoglobin disorders — sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia.
