Doudna and Charpentier Receive 2016 Gairdner Awards

IGI Executive Director Jennifer Doudna and her collaborator, Emmanuelle Charpentier, have been awarded 2016 Canada Gairdner International Awards.  Awarded annually by the Gairdner Foundation, the Gairdner Awards recognize significant medical discoveries from around the world.  This year the awards center on two defining themes: the revolutionary CRISPR gene editing technology (for the adaptive immunity discovery and the development of CRISPR-Cas9 as a usable genome editing tool) and advances in the HIV/AIDS field.

2016 Canada Gairdner Awards Honour CRISPR-Cas Researcher and HIV/AIDS Leaders
Gardner Foundation | Toronto, ON | March 23, 2016

In 2012, Dr. Doudna and her collaborator, Emmanuelle Charpentier,  published the description of a revolutionary new genome editing technology that uses an engineered single-guide RNA together with the DNA-cleaving enzyme Cas9 to readily manipulate the genomic DNA of individual cells. The CRISPR-Cas9 technology has given biologists the equivalent of a molecular surgery kit for routinely disabling, activating or altering genes with high efficiency and precision. Their collective work has led to the breakthrough discovery of DNA cleavage by Cas9, a dual RNA- guided enzyme whose ability to cut double-stranded DNA can be programmed by changing the guide RNA sequence. Recognizing that such an activity could be employed as a molecular tool for precision genome engineering in various kinds of cells, their teams redesigned the natural dual-RNA guide as a single-guide RNA (sgRNA), creating an easy-to-use two component system.

RNA-guided Cas9 complexes are effective genome engineering agents in a wide variety of organisms (including animals, plants, fungi and bacteria), and CRISPR technology is now being used in laboratories worldwide to advance biological research by engineering cells and organisms in precise ways, transforming scientific research in the fields of molecular genetics, genomics, agriculture and environmental biology.

Fellow award winners include: Rodolphe Barrangou (Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences and North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA), Philippe Horvath, (DuPont, Dangé-Saint-Romain, France), Feng Zhang (Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard), Anthony S. Fauci (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA), Frank Plummer (Public Health Agency of Canada and University of Manitoba).  The recipients will receive their awards at an awards dinner in Toronto on October 27, 2016.

Contact

Sommer Wedlock
Director of Communications, Gairdner Foundation
sommer@gairdner.org
Main: 416-596-9996 ext.202
Cell: 647-293-6785