Cambridge University chemists Shankar Balasubramanian and David Klenerman were on Tuesday declared the winners of the 2020 Millennium Technology Prize for their development of revolutionary sequencing techniques.
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Technology Academy Finland (TAF) has today, on 18 May, declared British Cambridge University professors Shankar Balasubramanian and David Klenerman as winners of the Millennium Technology Prize. The Prize is worth one million euros.
The duo’s Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technology means DNA can now be read in super-fast times. This means huge benefits to society, from helping the fight against killer diseases such as COVID-19 or cancer, to better understanding crop diseases and enhancing food production.
Next generation sequencing provides an effective way to study and identify new coronavirus strains and other pathogens. With the emergence of the pandemic, the technology is now being used to track and explore the novel coronavirus viral mutations, which is growing global concern. This work has helped the creation of multiple vaccines now being administered worldwide and is critical to the creation of new vaccines against new dangerous viral strains. The results will
Sir Balasubramanian and Sir Klenerman co-invented the Solexa-Illumina Next Generation DNA Sequencing (NGS), technology enabling fast, accurate, low-cost and large-scale genome sequencing - the process of determining the complete DNA sequence of an organism s make-up, which is proving crucial in humanity s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
May 20, 2021
HELSINKI (AFP) – Two British chemists who developed a super-fast DNA sequencing technique that paved the way for revolutionary healthcare advances were on Tuesday awarded Finland’s version of the Nobel science prizes.
Cambridge University professors Shankar Balasubramanian and David Klenerman took home the EUR1 million Millennium Technology Prize for their work over 27 years creating ever faster and cheaper ways to sequence the human genome.
The pair’s Next-Generation DNA Sequencing technology (NGS) “means huge benefits to society, from helping the fight against killer diseases such as Covid-19 or cancer, to better understanding crop diseases and enhancing food production”, Technology Academy Finland, which awards the biennial prize, said in a statement.
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