Art Levinson, Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, and Yuri Milner Announce the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences

San Francisco (ots/PRNewswire) -

11 Inaugural winners receive US$3 million each for Groundbreaking

Achievements in Life Science Research

Art Levinson, Sergey Brin, Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg,
Priscilla Chan and Yuri Milner announced today the launch of the
Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences ("Breakthrough Prize"),
recognizing excellence in research aimed at curing intractable
diseases and extending human life. The prize will be administered by
the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation, a not-for-profit
corporation ("Foundation") dedicated to advancing breakthrough
research, celebrating scientists and generating excitement about the
pursuit of science as a career.

The first 11 recipients of the Breakthrough Prize are:

- Cornelia I. Bargmann
- David Botstein
- Lewis C. Cantley
- Hans Clevers
- Napoleone Ferrara
- Titia de Lange
- Eric S. Lander
- Charles L. Sawyers
- Bert Vogelstein
- Robert A. Weinberg
- Shinya Yamanaka

All prize winners have agreed to serve on the Selection Committee
of the Foundation to choose recipients of future prizes.

Founding sponsors of the Breakthrough Prize include Sergey Brin
and Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, and Yuri
Milner, who collectively have agreed to establish 5 annual prizes,
US$3 million each, going forward.

Art Levinson, Chairman of the Board of Apple and Chairman and
former CEO of Genentech, will serve as the Chairman of the Board of
the Foundation, while additional directors will include Anne
Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg and Yuri Milner.

"I am delighted to announce the launch of the Breakthrough Prize
in Life Sciences and welcome its first recipients," said Art
Levinson. "I believe this new prize will shine a light on the
extraordinary achievements of the outstanding minds in the field of
life sciences, enhance medical innovation, and ultimately become a
platform for recognizing future discoveries. I also want to thank our
founding sponsors, Sergey Brin, Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg,
Priscilla Chan and Yuri Milner. Without their contribution, this
prize would not have been possible."

"We are thrilled to support scientists who think big, take risks
and have made a significant impact on our lives. These scientists
should be household names and heros in society," said Anne Wojcicki.

"Curing a disease should be worth more than a touchdown," said
Sergey Brin.

"Priscilla and I are honored to be part of this," said Mark
Zuckerberg. "We believe the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences has
the potential to provide a platform for other models of philanthropy,
so people everywhere have an opportunity at a better future."

"Solving the enormous complexity of human diseases calls for a
much bigger effort compared to fundamental physics and therefore
requires multiple sponsors to reward outstanding achievements," said
Yuri Milner.

Going forward, each year's prize winners will join the Selection
Committee for future awardees. One of the distinguishing
characteristics of the Breakthrough Prize will be a transparent
selection process, in which anyone will be able to nominate a
candidate online for consideration. Also, the prize can be shared
between any number of deserving scientists and can be received more
than once. In addition, there are no age restrictions for nominees.

All Breakthrough Prize recipients will be invited to present
public talks targeting a general audience. These lectures, together
with supporting materials, will be made available to the public,
allowing everyone to keep abreast of the latest developments in life
sciences, guided by contemporary masters of the field.

About the Breakthrough Prize Foundation:

The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation is a
not-for-profit corporation dedicated to advancing breakthrough
research in life sciences, celebrating scientists and generating
excitement about the pursuit of science as a career. Additional
information about the Foundation and the 2013 recipients of the
prizes can be found at
http://www.breakthroughprizeinlifesciences.org.

About the prize winners:

Cornelia I. Bargmann

Torsten N. Wiesel Professor and Head of the Lulu and Anthony Wang
Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior at the Rockefeller
University. Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

For the genetics of neural circuits and behavior, and synaptic
guidepost molecules.

David Botstein

Director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics
and the Anthony B. Evnin Professor of Genomics at Princeton
University.

For linkage mapping of Mendelian disease in humans using DNA
polymorphisms.

Lewis C. Cantley

Margaret and Herman Sokol Professor and Director of the Cancer
Center at Weill Cornell Medical College and New York-Presbyterian
Hospital.

For the discovery of PI 3-Kinase and its role in cancer
metabolism.

Hans Clevers

Professor of Molecular Genetics at Hubrecht Institute.

For describing the role of Wnt signaling in tissue stem cells and
cancer.

Titia de Lange

Leon Hess Professor, Head of the Laboratory of Cell Biology and
Genetics, and Director of the Anderson Center for Cancer Research at
the Rockefeller University.

For research on telomeres, illuminating how they protect
chromosome ends and their role in genome instability in cancer.

Napoleone Ferrara

Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Senior Deputy Director
for Basic Sciences at Moores Cancer Center at the University of
California, San Diego.

For discoveries in the mechanisms of angiogenesis that led to
therapies for cancer and eye diseases.

Eric S. Lander

President and Founding Director of the Eli and Edythe L. Broad
Institute of Harvard and MIT. Professor of Biology at MIT. Professor
of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School.

For the discovery of general principles for identifying human
disease genes, and enabling their application to medicine through the
creation and analysis of genetic, physical and sequence maps of the
human genome

Charles L. Sawyers

Chair, Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program at Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Investigator.

For cancer genes and targeted therapy.

Bert Vogelstein

Director of the Ludwig Center and Clayton Professor of Oncology
and Pathology at the Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer
Center. Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

For cancer genomics and tumor suppressor genes.

Robert A. Weinberg

Daniel K. Ludwig Professor for Cancer Research at MIT and Director
of the MIT/Ludwig Center for Molecular Oncology. Member, Whitehead
Institute for Biomedical Research.

For characterization of human cancer genes.

Shinya Yamanaka

Director of Center for iPS Cell Research and Application, Kyoto
University

Senior Investigator, Gladstone Institutes, San Francisco

For induced pluripotent stem cells.

About the participants:

Art Levinson

Arthur D. Levinson is chairman of Genentech, Inc. and a member of
the Roche Board of Directors. He has been chairman of Genentech since
1999, and he served as chief executive officer of Genentech from 1995
to 2009. Levinson joined Genentech in 1980 as a research scientist
and became vice president, Research Technology in 1989; vice
president, Research in 1990; senior vice president, Research in 1992;
and senior vice president, Research and Development in 1993.

Art was appointed Chairman of the Board of Apple in November 2011.
He had served as a co-lead director of Apple's board since 2005 and a
director since 2000. He is Chairman of the Board of Amyris and a
director of NGM Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. and the Broad Institute of
MIT and Harvard. He was a director of Google, Inc. from 2004 to 2009.
He currently serves on the Board of Scientific Consultants of the
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the Industrial Advisory Board
of the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research, the
Advisory Council for the Princeton University Department of Molecular
Biology and the Advisory Council for the Lewis-Sigler Institute for
Integrative Genomics.

Art has authored or co-authored more than 80 scientific articles
and has been a named inventor on 11 United States patents. Art
received his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of
Washington and earned a doctorate in Biochemical Sciences from
Princeton University.

Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg is the founder chairman and CEO of Facebook, which
he founded in 2004 in his college dorm room.

Mark is responsible for setting the overall direction and product
strategy for Facebook. He leads the design of Facebook's service and
the development of its core technology and infrastructure.

Mark studied computer science at Harvard University before moving
the company to Palo Alto, California. In September 2010, Mark donated
$100 million to the Newark Public School System to help renovate and
revamp the system.

Sergey Brin

Sergey Brin, a native of Moscow, received a Bachelor of Science
degree with honors in mathematics and computer science from the
University of Maryland at College Park. He is currently on leave from
the Ph.D. program in computer science at Stanford University, where
he received his master's degree. Sergey is a recipient of a National
Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship as well as an honorary MBA
from Instituto de Empresa. At Stanford, he met Larry Page and worked
on the project that became Google. Together they founded Google Inc.
in 1998, and Sergey continues to share responsibility for day-to-day
operations with Larry Page and Eric Schmidt.

Sergey's research interests include search engines, information
extraction from unstructured sources, and data mining of large text
collections and scientific data. He has published more than a dozen
academic papers, including Dynamic Data Mining: A New Architecture
for Data with High Dimensionality, which he published with Larry
Page.

Sergey has been a featured speaker at several international
academic, business and technology forums, including the World
Economic Forum and the Technology, Entertainment and Design
Conference.

Anne Wojcicki

Anne Wojcicki is Co-Founder of 23andMe, a privately held personal
genetics company that helps individuals understand their own genetic
information through DNA analysis technologies and Web-based
interactive tools. By encouraging individuals to access and learn
about their own genetic information, 23andMe aims to create a common,
standardized resource that has the potential to accelerate drug
discovery and bring personalized medicine to the public. Anne has an
extensive background in health-care investing, focused primarily on
biotechnology companies. She received a bachelor's degree in biology
from Yale University.

Yuri Milner

Yuri founded Mail.ru Group in 1999. Under his leadership, Mail.ru
Group became the leading European Internet company. Yuri took that
business public in 2010, stepping down from his role of Chairman at
the beginning of 2012 to focus his efforts on global Internet
investments. DST Global, a family of funds investing in Internet
companies, was established in 2009 and is one of the largest Internet
investors in the world.

Yuri graduated from Moscow State University in 1985 with an
advanced degree in theoretical physics and subsequently conducted
research at the Institute of Physics at the Russian Academy of
Sciences. In 2012 he launched the Fundamental Physics Prize
Foundation, a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to advancing
knowledge of the Universe at the deepest level by awarding annual
prizes for scientific breakthroughs, as well as communicating the
excitement of fundamental physics to the public.

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