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Intellia Therapeutics Congratulates Co-Founder Jennifer Doudna On Winning the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Inventing the Revolutionary CRISPR/Cas9 Genome Editing Technology
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 07, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, Jennifer Doudna, Ph.D., one of Intellia Therapeutics, Inc.’s scientific co-founders, was awarded
About this update from Intellia Therapeutics, Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":"CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 07, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, Jennifer Doudna, Ph.D., one of Intellia Therapeutics, Inc.’s scientific co-founders, was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of the CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing technology. Dr. Doudna shared the award with her research collaborator, Dr. Emmanuelle Charpentier. This is the first time two women scientists have jointly won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry.\n Since the publication of the seminal 2012 Science paper, Dr. Doudna has been widely recognized by the global scientific community for her pioneering invention and many contributions to CRISPR/Cas9 technology. This paper showed for the first time the necessary and essential components for the CRISPR/Cas9 system and how it could be used as a versatile genome editing tool in any non-cellular and cellular setting. Acting as a pair of programmable molecular scissors, the CRISPR/Cas9 system uses sequence-specific RNA guides to recognize DNA targets and activate a protein known as Cas9 to cut the DNA. This activity is fundamental to editing DNA, and it serves as the genetic basis for a vast array of potential applications. For their CRISPR/Cas9 invention, Drs. Doudna and Charpentier have been awarded the Lurie Prize in the Biomedical Sciences, the Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research, the Dr. H. P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics, and the LUI Che Woo Prize for Welfare Betterment, among other recognitions. “We congratulate Dr. Doudna and Dr. Charpentier on winning the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their revolutionary invention of CRISPR/Cas9,” said Intellia President and Chief Executive Officer John Leonard, M.D. “Their CRISPR/Cas9 invention is already being applied in ways that are transforming science and medicine. Our team at Intellia is honored to be using this powerful tool in our work to develop potential cures for people suffering from conditions ranging from genetic disease to cancer. We are proud of Dr. Doudna and our other scientific co-founders, Drs. Rodolphe Barrangou, Eric Sontheimer, Luciano Marrafini and Derrick Rossi, who have each made, and continue to make, tremendous contributions to the genomics field.” About Jennifer DoudnaDr. Doudna is a faculty member of the Molecular and Cell Biology and Chemistry department at UC Berkeley, where she is the Li Ka Shing Chanc...