The world's leading teams researching into the human genome were granted
the Award. The teams are from The Sanger Centre in the United Kingdom,
directed by John Sulston, from the National Human Genome Research
Institute, under the leadership of Francis Collins, from Celera Genomics
(U.S.A.) led by Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith and from Genoscope in
France, under the directorship of Jean Weissenbach.
The complete mapping of the Genome is one of the most ambitious projects
in the history of Science. Its conclusion will usher in a new era in
the treatment of illnesses. Spectacular breakthroughs in the complete
molecular and physiological analysis of genes and their interactions
will bring genetic predisposition to suffering illnesses to light,
thereby leading to better prevention policies to combat them.
Craig Venter
Craig Venter (Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, 1946) is a veteran of the war in Vietnam, where he served in the
medical corps. During the seventies he was a lecturer at the State
University of New York, and in the eighties he joined the National
Institutes of Health. He left there in 1997 to set up his own company,
Celera, a subdivision of Perkin Elmer, and to speed up the complete
sequencing of the human genome. In his role as scientific director of
Celera Genomics Corporation he has discovered over half the 30.000 human
genes that have been discovered. One of his successes was to decipher
the complete sequence of the Haemophilus influenzae bacteria.
John Sulston
John Sulston (Cambridge, Great Britain, 1942 - 2018) began his scientific career in the seventies at Cambridge,
where he graduated in Organic Chemistry, and the obtained his doctorate.
He spent a few years in La Jolla (California) before returning in 1969
to the Medical Research Council in Cambridge. He was the director of the
Sanger Centre of the Wellcome Trust in Cambridge, and one of his first
successes was to decipher the complete sequence of the Caenorhabditis
elegans nematode. He has been a leading advocate of international
cooperation in the ambitious task of deciphering the human genome in the
public sector. The Sanger Centre has set up the "genome campus",
Europe's biggest contribution to the Genome Project.
John Sulston accepted the Prince of Asturias Award on behalf of the
International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium, which released the
sequence of the human genome freely and without restriction, for the
benefit of all humankind.
Hamilton Smith
Hamilton Smith (New York, USA, 1931) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1978, he studied Medicine at the universities of
Illinois, California and John Hopkins University School of Medicine in
Baltimore. He has been director of the DNA research department at Celera
Genomics Corporation since 1998, and has thus had a fundamental
influence on the discovery and publicising of the human genome map. He
is a member of the U.S.A.'s National Academy of Sciences, of the
American Microbiology Society, and of the Society of Biological
Chemists.
Francis Collins
Francis Collins (Staunton, Virginia, USA, 1950) received his doctorate in Chemistry from Yale
University, and graduated as a doctor at the University of North
Carolina. He has spent most of his career carrying out research at
national public health institutions in the U.S.A., where he has lead the
Human Genome Project, which 18 different countries are involved in,
since 1999. He has identified the gene responsible for multiple
endocrine neoplasia, and has carried out extensive searches amongst the
people of Finland for the gene that is a risk factor for diabetes. He
has promoted new forms of cloning to study the genes involved in cystic
fibrosis, neurofibromatosis and Huntington's Disease.
Francis Collins has accepted the Prince of Asturias Award on behalf of
the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium, which has released
the sequence of the human genome freely and without restriction, for
the benefit of all humankind.
Jean Weissenbach
Jean Weissenbach (Strasbourg, France, 1946) studied Mathematics and Pharmaceutics, and has a
doctorate in Science from his hometown University of Strasbourg. He has
been director of research at France's National Centre for Scientific
Research (CNRS) and is at present the director of Genoscope. He has made
major contributions to molecular genetics and chromosome mapping which
have been the foundation for positional cloning of human genes involved
in numerous illnesses and for the further progress in the task of
sequencing the human genome..
