Overview
- The Lasker Foundation announced the 2026 winners on Sept. 9, 2026, naming Emmanuel Mignot and Masashi Yanagisawa, Kunihiro Hattori with colleagues Takehisa Kitazawa and Tomoyuki Igawa, and Michael J. Fox.
- Mignot and Yanagisawa received the Basic Medical Research Award for identifying orexin, a brain peptide that maintains wakefulness and whose loss causes narcolepsy.
- The orexin work directly led to new drugs for sleep disorders, including Takeda’s orexin-activating drug oveporexton (Orzeyful), which won FDA approval in August 2026.
- Hattori, Kitazawa and Igawa won the Clinical Medical Research Award for inventing the bispecific antibody emicizumab (Hemlibra), a subcutaneous therapy approved in 2017 that has treated more than 30,000 people with hemophilia A.
- Fox received the Public Service Award for advocacy that reshaped Parkinson’s research funding through the Michael J. Fox Foundation, which has directed over $3 billion to studies and trials; the Lasker prizes carry $250,000 honoraria and will be presented at a Sept. 17 gala in New York City.