Thijn Brummelkamp named one of the world's top young innovators by MIT's Technology Review magazine
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (September 14, 2005) - Whitehead Institute
Fellow Thijn Brummelkamp has been chosen as one of the
world's 35 Top Young Innovators by MIT's Technology
Review magazine. The TR35 consists of 35 individuals
under 35 years of age whose innovative work in business
and technology has a profound impact on the world. Nominees
are recognized for their contribution in transforming
the nature of technology in industries such as biotechnology,
information technology, energy, medicine, manufacturing,
nanotechnology, telecommunications and transportation.
Brummelkamp will be honored on September 28-29 during
Technology Review's 2005 Emerging Technologies
Conference at MIT.
Brummelkamp is an expert in cancer genetics.
He exploits a process called RNA interference (RNAi),
in which small RNA molecules can selectively turn off
specific genes.
Nobel laureate and RNAi expert Phillip Sharp told Technology Review that Brummelkamp's work "will lead to new treatments" for cancer. |
The short lives of these small RNA molecules have made
them difficult to use for cancer research, where the
cells need to be observed over long periods of time
throughout many cell divisions. Brummelkamp addressed
this problem.
While still in graduate school, he and his colleagues
developed a small RNA molecule that could last the entire
life of the cell. He did this by engineering a plasmid,
a circular strand of DNA that encodes the RNA. When
placed into a cell, the plasmid enables the cell
to naturally produce this small RNA molecule, and thus
to permanently shut down the targeted gene. The plasmid
continues to produce the small RNA in the cell's progeny
as well. While Brummelkamp uses this technique primarily
for cancer research, it has wide application in many
areas of molecular biology.
Nobel laureate and RNAi expert Phillip Sharp told Technology
Review that Brummelkamp's work "will lead to new
treatments" for cancer.
Two other young scientists named to the TR35 are former
Whitehead Fellow Trey Ideker, now at the University
of California, San Diego, and former Whitehead postdoctoral
scientist Kevin Eggan, now at Harvard University. And
in 2002, Whitehead Associate Member David Sabatini was
named a top young innovator by the magazine.
The TR35 panel of judges includes:
• Howard Anderson, Managing
director, YankeeTek Ventures
• Gordon Bell, Senior researcher,
Microsoft's Media Presence Research Group
• Alexis Borisy, Founder, president,
and CEO, CombinatoRx
• Aref Chowdhury, Member of technical
staff, quantum information and optics research department,
Lucent Technologies' Bell Laboratories
• Joe Chung, Cofounder, Art Technology
Group
• James Collins, Professor of biomedical
engineering, Boston University
• Sanjay Correa, Global technology
leader for energy and propulsion technologies, General
Electric Global Research
• Irene Greif, IBM fellow and department
group manager, Collaborative User Experience, IBM
• Bill Joy, Partner, Kleiner, Perkins,
Caufield, and Byers
• Christina Lampe-Onnerud, CEO, Boston-Power
• Chad Mirkin, Professor of chemistry,
Northwestern University
• Nicholas Negroponte, Professor of
media technology and founding chairman, MIT Media Laboratory
• Micah Siegel, President and CEO,
Concept2Company
• Michael S. Tomczyk, Managing director,
Mack Center for Technological Innovation, Wharton School,
University of Pennsylvania
• Sophie V. Vandebroek, Chief engineer,
Xerox
• Susie Wee, Principal research scientist
and R&D department manager, Hewlett-Packard Labs
• Chelsea C. White III, Professor of
transportation and logistics, School of Industrial and
Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Jackie Ying, Executive director,
Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, Singapore
• Daphne Zohar, Founder and managing
general partner, PureTech Ventures
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