STOCKHOLM/BERLIN (SWEDEN/GERMANY) – This year’s Nobel Prize for Chemistry went to two women scientists for creating genetic ‘scissors’ that enables rewriting the code of life thereby making great contributions to cancer therapies and adding to the prospects of finding a cure to hereditary ailments.
Emmanuelle Charpentier of France and Jennifer Doudna of the USA share the prize which comes along with 10 million Swedish crown (£868,882) for developing the CRISPR/Cas9 tool to modify the DNA of animals, plants and even microorganisms.
“The ability to cut the DNA where you want has revolutionised the life sciences,” Pernilla Wittung Stafshede of the Swedish Academy of Sciences said during an award ceremony.
Charpentier, 51, and Doudna, 56, are the sixth and seventh women to clinch the Nobel for Chemistry, joining the illustrious league of Marie Curie, who the prize in 1911.
Charpentier, of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, told media persons in the German capital that she was “extremely emotional and extremely moved” by the award, which came as a surprise.
“The first Nobel won by two women showed how science becomes more modern and develops more female leaders”, she said.
Doudna, who is the co-founder of biotech startup Mammoth, is using CRISPR to battle the pandemic. Her startup has tied up with GlaxoSmithKline to develop a test to detect infections.
“What started as a curiosity‐driven, fundamental discovery project has now become the breakthrough strategy used by countless researchers working to help improve the human condition,” Doudna said.
There is rising concern about CRISPR giving unbridled power to scientists which can be misused to create ‘designer babies’.
“The enormous power of this technology means that we need to use it with great care,” said Claes Gustafsson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.
“But it is equally clear that this is a technology, a method that will provide humankind with great opportunities.”
Asked about her beliefs, Charpentier said she was raised a Catholic. “All my focus is on science now – I believe in what I am doing as a scientist.”
Competing claims about the discovery of CRISPR has sparked a patent row involving the duo and a team led by Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
Charpentier’s research on ancient bacteria, Streptococcus pyogenes, led her to come out with the path-breaking discovery. She found that a previously unknown molecule was part of the immune system of the microbe and it had the power to cleave DNA.
After publishing her findings in 2011, she joined hands with biochemist Doudna, of the University of California, Berkeley, to recreate the microbe’s genetic scissors in a test tube and make the tool more simple and easier to use.