All five scientists sharing the 2016 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize for elucidating the CRISPR bacterial defense system and recognizing its utility for gene editing will tell the story of their discoveries at the 28th annual Warren Alpert Foundation Prize Symposium at Harvard Medical School on Thursday, Oct. 6.
The symposium will also feature invited speakers Austin Burt, professor of evolutionary genetics at Imperial College London, who will discuss developing CRISPR-based gene drive for malaria control, and Luhan Yang, HMS research fellow in genetics and co-founder and chief scientific officer of eGenesis, who will discuss rewriting the pig genome to transform xenotransplantation.
The 2016 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize recipients are:
- Rodolphe Barrangou, associate professor in the Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences and the Todd R. Klaenhammer Distinguished Scholar in Probiotics Research at North Carolina State University
- Philippe Horvath, senior scientist at DuPont in Dangé-Saint-Romain, France
- Jennifer Doudna, the Li Ka Shing Chancellor’s Chair in Biomedical and Health Sciences and professor of molecular and cell biology and of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley
- Emmanuelle Charpentier, scientific member and director at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin and professor at Umeå University in Sweden
- Virginijus Siksnys, professor, chief scientist and department head at the Institute of Biotechnology at Vilnius University in Lithuania
Barrangou and Horvath established that bacteria protect themselves from being killed by pathogens, such as viruses, using a system called CRISPR (short for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) to cut up specific segments of the invading viruses’ DNA.
Building on their findings, Doudna, Charpentier and Siksnys realized that the system could be programmed to zero in on any desired genetic sequence in a broader array of organisms, including humans, and that this purposeful cutting could be used to alter or replace the targeted DNA at will.
Together, these discoveries, which were further refined and expanded by the prize recipients and other researchers, have generated a powerful tool for rapidly determining gene function and have democratized the ability to pursue clinical advances, such as correcting genetic defects and designing better drugs by making gene editing faster, easier and cheaper than the technologies available previously.
“The game-changing insights achieved by these five scientists led to a technique that has been swiftly embraced across the globe, altering the way we study and understand eukaryotic genetics and offering enormous potential for developing new gene- and cell-based therapies, including treatment strategies for previously intractable genetic diseases,” said Jeffrey S. Flier, former dean of the faculty of medicine at Harvard Medical School and chair of the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize Scientific Advisory Committee, when the prize winners were announced in March 2016.
The Warren Alpert Foundation Prize recognizes scientists whose research has led to the prevention, cure or treatment of human diseases or disorders and constitutes a seminal scientific finding that holds great promise for ultimately changing our understanding of, or ability to treat, disease.
The late Warren Alpert, a philanthropist dedicated to advancing biomedical research, established the prize in 1987. To date, the foundation has awarded more than $3 million to 54 individuals. Eight honorees have also received a Nobel Prize.
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The Warren Alpert Foundation
Each year the Warren Alpert Foundation receives 30 to 50 nominations for the Alpert Prize from scientific leaders worldwide. Prize recipients are selected by the foundation’s scientific advisory board, composed of distinguished biomedical scientists and chaired by the dean of Harvard Medical School.
Warren Alpert (1920-2007), a native of Chelsea, Massachusetts, established the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize in 1987 after reading about the development of a vaccine for hepatitis B. Alpert decided on the spot that he would like to reward such breakthroughs, so he picked up the phone and told the vaccine’s creator, Kenneth Murray of the University of Edinburgh, that he had won a prize. Alpert then set about creating the foundation.
To award subsequent prizes, Alpert asked Daniel Tosteson (1925-2009), then dean of Harvard Medical School, to convene a panel of experts to identify scientists from around the world whose research has had a direct impact on the treatment of disease.
The Warren Alpert Foundation does not solicit funds. It is a private philanthropic organization funded solely by the Warren Alpert Estate.
