Dr. Lourdes J. Cruz received her L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science on 4 March 2010 in UNESCO. She is being honored “for the discovery of conotoxins produced by certain marine snails that can serve as painkillers and pharmaceutical probes to study brain function”.

The Philippine Senate through PS Resolution No 1442 also paid tribute to her outstanding feat in science in the international scene and for bringing home pride and glory to the country.

To know more about her research journey, read the article "National Scientist Lourdes Jansuy Cruz: From Rice to Conus Research — the Journey" written by Dr. E.M. Tecson-Mendoza published in the Philippine Science Letters...

"In the mid 1970s, Lourdes J. Cruz published a seminal paper on the venom protein of the marine snail Conus in Veliger. This was followed by a series of papers on the feeding and mating habits of the Conus geographus in captivity, on the assay of the toxin, on the toxin proteins of different marine snails and on the basic chemical and molecular make-up of the toxins and their effects on the nervous system. In 1985, Dr. Cruz and co-workers reported in the prestigious journal Science that the venom of the marine snail called Conus geographus from the Philippine seas contains a cocktail of many peptides with various activities that affect the ion channels and receptors of the central nervous system. There were peptides that cause muscular paralysis, peptides that cause sleepiness or drowsiness, peptides that make the test animals jump!..."