Scientists Win Inventors Prize for DNA Work
The scientists who developed recombinant DNA, which became the cornerstone of the multibillion-dollar biotechnology industry, have won a share of the world’s biggest inventors prize.
Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer, who collaborated on their breakthrough genetic engineering two decades ago, were honored Thursday with the second annual $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize.
What Cohen and Boyer did with DNA paved the way for mass production of hormones and other chemicals once made only by the human body--for example, insulin for treating diabetes.
Boyer went on to co-found Genentech, the San Francisco-based biotech company with 2,700 employees and $1.7 billion in assets. Cohen is a professor of genetics and medicine at Stanford University.
The prize was founded and funded by inventor Jerome H. Lemelson. Lester C. Thurow, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics professor who heads the prize board, said winners are picked for inventions that succeed commercially, improve the quality of life and help strengthen the U.S. competitively.
