Breakthrough Prizes Recognize Aneuploidy Researcher, Biochemist

This year’s winners also include the developers of nusinersen, an oligonucleotide therapeutic for spinal muscular atrophy.

Written byCatherine Offord

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ABOVE: One of Xiaowei Zhuang’s students went on to use STORM to reveal the triangular protein mesh underlying the membranes of red blood cells.
KE XU, UC BERKELEY

The 2019 Breakthrough Prizes in Life Sciences honor five scientists working in fields from genetics to microscopy, the Breakthrough Prize Foundation announced yesterday (October 17). Each take home $3 million.

Molecular geneticist Adrian Krainer of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory received the award for his part in developing nusinersen (Spinraza), an oligonucleotide therapeutic for the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy. His colleague Frank Bennett, senior vice president of research at Ionis Pharmaceuticals—the company that commercialized the drug—also received an award. Read The Scientist’s coverage of their work on nusinersen here.

Cell biologist Angelika Amon was awarded a prize for work on the effects of an abnormal number of chromosomes on cell function. The MIT researcher spoke with The Scientist about her work on the ...

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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