Richard Lerner

Lerner, an American physician-chemist of Jewish background, led the Scripps Research Institute as its president from 1987 to 2012. His laboratory developed catalytic antibodies — antibodies engineered to accelerate chemical reactions like enzymes — and pioneered combinatorial antibody libraries, vast collections from which useful antibodies can be selected. These methods transformed drug discovery and antibody engineering, providing tools now used to create human therapeutic antibodies.