Emmanuelle Charpentier awarded the 2015 Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine
NEWS
The Swiss Louis-Jeantet Foundation honours the Umeå researcher Emmanuelle Charpentier for her contribution in harnessing an ancient mechanism of bacterial immunity into a powerful technology for editing genomes.
Bacterial pathogens also possess an immune system that defends them against predators and particularly viruses. When Emmanuelle Charpentier’s team studied this system, they unravelled a unique mechanism – CRISPR-Cas9 – a pair of molecular scissors composed of a duplex of two RNAs linked to a protein. The system was harnessed into a new tool that makes genome editing within the cell almost like child’s play. It is already evident that the CRISPR-Cas9 system will revolutionise research in biology and medicine.
Emmanuelle Charpentier is head of department of the Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden (MIMS) at Umeå University, and visiting professor at Umeå Centre for Microbial Research (UCMR). Since 2013, she also conducts research in Germany at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig and holds an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship at the Hannover Medical School (MHH). Charpentier is planning on using the prize money to conduct further research on the mechanisms governing the pathogenicity of a streptococcus, namely Streptococcus pyogenes.
The Louis-Jeantet Prize was established in 1986 and is regarded as one of the most important European awards in medical research. The prize grant is 700,000 Swiss francs, (approximately 640,000 Euro). The award ceremony will be held in Swiss Geneva on 22 April 2015. The second award-winner is Rudolf Zechner from Austria who is awarded the prize for his contribution to our understanding of the vital role of lipids’ metabolism in the development of certain diseases.
The Louis-Jeantet Foundation was founded in 1982 after having been endowed with the fortune of the French businessman Louis Jeantet who resided in Geneva in Switzerland. The foundation aims to support excellent research and to promote the best biomedical research in Europe. Emmanuelle Charpentier is the fourth researcher active in Sweden receiving the prize.
More information and video interview
Louis-Jeantet Fondation Under the above link, you can see a video interview with Charpentier under "Media" in the middle of the page.
