MRC salutes the two British Lasker Award winners
18 September 2005
Professor Colin Blakemore, Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council (MRC) said: “I am delighted that two British scientists, Professor Sir Edwin Southern and Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys, have been awarded the Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research in recognition of their work, which transformed the field of human genetic analysis.
“Both scientists have been part of the MRC ‘family’ of scientists for many years and this award is a powerful endorsement of their contribution to medical research.
“Edwin Southern invented the seminal ‘Southern blot’ technique for identifying DNA sequences in the human genome while working at the MRC Mammalian Genome Unit in Edinburgh.
“The MRC has long supported Alec Jeffreys’ work at Leicester University through project grants. His ‘eureka moment’, the devising of ‘genetic fingerprinting’, has revolutionised forensic diagnostics.”
Often called “America’s Nobels” the Lasker Awards have honored 70 scientists who subsequently went on to receive the Nobel Prize, including 19 in the last 15 years.
The Awards will be presented on Friday 23 September in New York.
For further information contact the MRC Press Office on 020 7637 6011.
Note to Editors
The Medical Research Council (MRC) is a national organisation funded by the UK tax-payer. Its business is medical research aimed at improving human health; everyone stands to benefit from the outputs. The research it supports and the scientists it trains meet the needs of the health services, the pharmaceutical and other health-related industries and the academic world. MRC has funded work which has led to some of the most significant discoveries and achievements in medicine in the UK. About half of the MRC’s expenditure of approximately £500 million is invested in its 40 Institutes, Units and Centres. The remaining half goes in the form of grant support and training awards to individuals and teams in universities and medical schools.
