AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize
2014 Award Recipients
The 2014 Newcomb Cleveland Prize is awarded to Lulu Xie, Hongyi Kang,Qiwu Xu, Michael J. Chen, Yonghong Liao, Meenakshisundaram Thiyagarajan, John O’Donnell, Daniel J. Christensen, Charles Nicholson, Jeffrey J. Iliff ,Takahiro Takano, Rashid Deane, Maiken Nedergaard for their outstanding report “Sleep Drives Metabolite Clearance from the Adult Brain” published in Science 18 October 2013, pp. 373-377.
Xie and colleagues show that, during sleep, the brain clears out harmful toxins or waste that build up during the day. To understand why humans need sleep for good health and normal brain function, they used a number of techniques, among them iontophoresis and in-vivo two-photon imaging, to observe the flow of fluids in the brains of sleeping and awake mice. Specifically, they looked at the fluid flowing in the interstitial space—the areas between the cells in the brain.The researchers concluded that, during the natural sleep state, the space between brain cells increases by over 60 percent, boosting the flow of cerebrospinal fluid that flushes accumulated waste products of brain metabolism such as β-amyloid (a protein that accumulates in the brain while awake and that is implicated in Alzheimer’s disease) from brain tissue.The study of this cleansing system may have far-reaching implications in neurodegenerative disorders.
The 2013-2014 Newcomb Cleveland Prize Selection Committee included Marcia McNutt, the Science Editor-in-Chief as well as Science Senior Editorial Board members Paul Alivisatos of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley; Michael Turner, Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago; Susan Rosenberg, Professor, Departments of Molecular and Human Genetics, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Molecular Virology and Microbiology, Baylor College of Medicine; Ernst Fehr, Chairman of the Department of Economics, Professor of Microeconomics and Experimental Economic Research at the University of Zürich, Switzerland; Andrew Sugden, Science Deputy Editor, Biological Sciences; Valda Vinson, Science Deputy Editor, Biological Sciences; and Barbara Jasny, Science Deputy Editor, Commentary.
Please click here for a list of past recipients.