This year’s installment of The Scientist’s annual Top 10 Innovations competition highlights a mixture of basic research and clinical tools. Our expert panel of independent judges selected sequencers, reagent kits, genome-editing methods, and other technologies that could have huge impacts on science and medicine alike.
Although high technology is certainly on display in this year’s winner’s circle, one of the Top 10 products embodies a souped-up version of traditional technology. The 3D Cell Explorer is a light microscope, but one that can reveal remarkable detail inside living cells without the need for tags or labels.
Another hot life-science topic—CRISPR genome editing—makes two appearances in this year’s Top 10, in the form of tools that use the precision method to modulate specific target genes with very short turnaround times.
All in all, it was another great year for life-science innovation, and The Scientist is happy to present our Top 10 Innovations of 2015.
CHARMION CRUICKSHANK-QUINN
Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Cruickshank-Quinn performs basic science research and integrates metabolomics and genomics data to identify molecular markers and investigate perturbed pathways in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. She gained experience in a number of mass spectrometry, instrumentation, and sample-preparation techniques during graduate school at SUNY Buffalo, working in the Instrument Center; at Fortitech Inc.; and as a research fellow at National Jewish Health in Denver.
