The 'American Nobel', was conferred on Professors Southern and Jeffreys for the development of southern blotting and DNA fingerprinting - together revolutionising genetics and forensic diagnostics
Ed Southern, founder and CSO of Oxford Gene Technology, has been awarded the 2005 Albert Lasker Award for clinical medical research with Alec Jeffreys of Leicester University.
This prestigious American medical research prize, sometimes called the 'American Nobel', was conferred on Professor Southern and Professor Jeffreys for the development of two powerful technologies - southern blotting (hybridisation) and DNA fingerprinting - that together revolutionised human genetics and forensic diagnostics.
Their work eventually led to the mapping of the human genome.
Southern blotting allowed scientists to detect a single fragment of DNA, making the comprehensive study of genes possible for the first time.
This method has been used to discover gene mutations associated with diseases, such as diabetes and sickle cell anaemia, and in antenatal diagnosis.
Professor Southern, who received the award at a ceremony in New York on Friday 23 September, said: "I am truly honoured to receive this award and to share it with Alec Jeffreys.
"It is very gratifying to realise the method has had such a large impact".
Oxford Gene Technology (OGT) is a privately owned company founded in 1995 by Professor Sir Edwin Southern.
The mission of the company is to develop advanced molecular tools for biologists and to make them widely available through licensing and service activities.
The key business areas of OGT include licensing, which has successfully provided access for a number of companies to OGT's fundamental intellectual property, particularly in the area of microarrays; a services business which provides a flexible and cost-effective, customised DNA microarray service covering a range of applications and offers specialist support to assist customers with every aspect of their research.
Tridend is developing 'mass tags' to enhance the amount of information that researchers can generate from mass spectrometry experiments in proteomics and genomics.
Oxamer is generating novel array formats based on electrochemical deposition methods for use in life science and diagnostics OGT's intellectual property covers four general areas that are relevant to the biological sciences - these incorporate microarrays, genomics, proteomics and electrochemistry.
