Dr. Helen H. Hobbs, a UT Southwestern Medical Center geneticist from Dallas, has been awarded the 2016 Breakthrough Prize for her work identifying genetic variants in the genome and creating potential for more effective drug treatments.
The international prize comes with $3 million.
Hobbs was unavailable Monday for further comment.
The Breakthrough Prize was founded by Silicon Valley philanthropists Sergey Brin, Anne Wojcicki, Jack Ma, Cathy Zhang, Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan and Yuri and Julia Milner. A total of $21.9 million and seven prizes were awarded Sunday to people who have challenged conventional thinking and pioneered research in science and math.
Prize officials lauded Hobbs’ approach to studying the genome. Instead of looking at common genome differences, Hobbs, along with UT Southwestern colleague Dr. Jonathan Cohen, studied the effects of genetic mutations on LDL cholesterol in lipid metabolism and fatty liver disease.
Hobbs and Cohen discovered that people with a genetic mutation that blocked the formation of the PCSK9 gene had low LDL cholesterol levels and had a very low risk of heart disease.
That research led to the development of a new class of drugs to lower LDL cholesterol. The FDA approved two new drugs from this class over the summer.
Hobbs’ work was part of the Dallas Heart Study. The study, co-launched by Hobbs with funding from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation in 1999, collected health information, blood samples, imaging studies, genomic DNA and genetic profiling from several though people in Dallas County across many ethnicities. It allows researchers a database of people’s individual genetic sequences and actual physical traits.
Hobbs’ further research into fatty liver disease has discovered genetic variants responsible for fat accumulation in the liver, liver inflammation, cirrhosis and liver cancer.
Hobbs is director of the Eugene McDermott Center for Human Growth and Development and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. She studied at Stanford University and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine before interning at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City and joining the staff at UT Southwestern. She joined the UT Southwestern faculty in 1987.