Kastner Earns Sweden’s Crafoord Prize

NHGRI’s Dr. Daniel Kastner recently was awarded Sweden’s Crafoord Prize.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences recently awarded this year’s Crafoord Prize in Polyarthritis to Dr. Daniel Kastner, NHGRI scientific director. The prize, worth 6 million Swedish kronor (approximately $700,000) this year, is one of the major international science honors, with subject areas that complement the Nobel Prizes and rotate from year to year.

The prize’s website cited Kastner “for establishing the concept of autoinflammatory diseases. He has identified the mechanisms responsible for familial Mediterranean fever, TRAPS and other diagnoses within this group. They are genetic diseases that are unusual in most of the world, but may have a higher incidence in some areas. One or two of every thousand people in the eastern Mediterranean have familial Mediterranean fever, while TRAPS was initially discovered among families in Ireland and Scotland.”

The Crafoord Prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Crafoord Foundation in Lund, with the academy being responsible for selecting the laureates. Its subject areas rotate every year, between mathematics and astronomy, the geosciences, biosciences and polyarthritis (such as rheumatoid arthritis). The polyarthritis prize—instituted because the donor, Holger Crafoord, suffered from severe rheumatoid arthritis toward the end of his life—is only awarded when there has been scientific progress that motivates a prize.