French scientist Emmanuelle Charpentier, a joint winner of last year’s Tang Prize for Biopharmaceutical Science, on Sunday gave a keynote speech on the CRISPR/Cas9 system, a genome editing technology, at the Experimental Biology meeting in Chicago.
During the presentation, titled “The bacterial CRISPR/Cas9 system: a game changer in genome engineering,” Charpentier said that when she was in Taiwan last year for the Tang Prize award ceremony, she was pleased to expound on the new applications of CRISPR/Cas9 at several academic forums.
Charpentier and US nationals Jennifer Doudna and Zhang Feng (張鋒) shared the Tang Prize for biopharmaceutical science for the development of the CRISPR/Cas9, a genome editing tool that enables geneticists and medical researchers to edit DNA, using a technique that has the potential for a wide range of applications.
Charpentier, who holds a doctorate from the Max Planck Institute, has won many other prizes for the development of the “GPS-like” CRISPR/Cas9, which is faster, cheaper and more accurate than previous genome editing techniques.
Since 2012, about 1,000 laboratories around the world have adopted the genome editing platform to conduct experiments in cell biology and genetic engineering.
At the Chicago conference, the host, Chien Shu (錢煦), a bioengineer and member of Academia Sinica, paid tribute to Charpentier for her contribution to the development of CRISPR/Cas9 as a breakthrough genome editing platform that promises to revolutionize biomedical research and disease treatment.
All three winners of last year’s Tang Prize for biopharmaceutical science have earned international acclaim for their achievements and are seen as having a good chance of winning the Nobel Prize.
They are scheduled to give Tang Prize Award lectures, which started with Charpentier’s presentation at the conference in Chicago.
Later this year, Zhang is to address the annual meeting of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies, Tang Prize Foundation chief executive officer Chern Jenn-chuan (陳振川) said.
Doudna has been invited to deliver a lecture at next year’s Experimental Biology meeting in San Diego, California, Chern added.
These lectures are aimed at promoting the ideas of Tang Prize winners in the international community, he said.
The Experimental Biology meeting is an annual conference of more than 14,000 scientists and exhibitors representing six sponsoring scientific societies and many guest societies.
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