Founded by the millennial world’s most famous billionaires, the Breakthrough Prizes may not yet rival the Nobel Prizes in prestige, but the so-called “Oscars of Science” do offer three-times as much prize money. The 2024 prizes in the Life Sciences category recognised groundbreaking research set to change the lives of those suffering from three debilitating diseases: Parkinson’s disease, cystic fibrosis, and cancer.
These discoveries, along with the contexts and controversies surrounding them, exemplify the state of cutting-edge medical biology today.
“There are about 7,000 known rare diseases, affecting around 8% of the world’s population” and “75% of rare disease patients [are] children,” according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Despite these sobering numbers, there is little research underway on rare diseases.
