Tak Mak wins the Gold Leaf Prize for Discovery
Published: May 23, 2019
University Professor Tak Mak, from the departments of medical biophysics and immunology at the Faculty of Medicine, has been named the 2018 recipient of the Gold Leaf Prize for Discovery.
The $100,000 prize, from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, recognizes groundbreaking health research and will support new research.
Mak, a senior scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, is renowned for a career that has spanned biochemistry, virology, genetics, cancer metabolism and clinical therapy.
Earlier this year, his group used genetics to show that the nervous system and immune system communicate through a molecule called acetylcholine. The discovery confirmed a long-suspected, but poorly understood, link between the two systems, opening several new avenues of research.
