Awards & Winners

Rudolf Jaenisch

Date of Birth 1942
Place of Birth Międzygórze, Lower Silesian Voivodeship
(Lower Silesian Voivodeship, KÅ‚odzko County, Gmina Bystrzyca KÅ‚odzka, Poland)
Nationality Germany, United States of America
Profession Biologist, Researcher, Professor
Rudolf Jaenisch is a biologist at MIT. He is a pioneer of transgenic science, in which an animal’s genetic makeup is altered. Jaenisch has focused on creating transgenic mice to study cancer and neurological diseases. Jaenisch’s first breakthrough occurred in 1974 when he and Beatrice Mintz showed that foreign DNA could be integrated into the DNA of early mouse embryos. They injected retrovirus DNA into early mouse embryos and showed that leukemia DNA sequences had integrated the mouse genome and also to its offspring. These mice were the first transgenic mammals in history. Jaenisch is a leader in the field of therapeutic cloning, also known as nuclear transfer, in which the genetic information from one cell is transplanted into an unfertilized egg that has had its DNA removed. When it is placed in a Petri dish, the egg develops into a blastocyst from which stem cells can be harvested. Jaenisch’s therapeutic cloning research deals exclusively with mice, but he is an advocate for using the same techniques with human cells in order to advance embryonic stem cell research. However, Jaenisch opposes human reproductive cloning, where the egg is placed into the uterus of a female, with the hope that it will develop into a fetus.

Awards by Rudolf Jaenisch

Check all the awards nominated and won by Rudolf Jaenisch.

2011


Wolf Prize in Medicine
(For the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) from skin cells (SY) and demonstration that iPS cells can be used to cure genetic disease in a mammal, thus establishing their therapeutic potential (RJ).)

2010


National Medal of Science for Biological Sciences
(For improving our understanding of epigenetic regulation of gene expression: the biological mechanisms that affect how genetic information is variably expressed. His work has led to major advances in our understanding of mammalian cloning and embryonic stem cells.)

2008


Massry Prize
(For their work in the field of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells.)