Getting the message: How elucidation of messenger RNA formation empowered RNA therapeutics

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2021 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize Virtual Symposium

In honor of Lynne Maquat and Joan Steitz for the discovery of fundamental pathways and mechanisms that ensure accurate RNA splicing and quality control of gene expression involving RNA.

Lynne Maquat

Lynne Maquat | 2021 Recipient

Dr. Lynne Maquat is the J. Lowell Orbison Endowed Chair, Professor of Biochemistry & Biophysics who holds concomitant appointments in Pediatrics and in Oncology, Founding Director of the Center for RNA Biology, and Founding Chair of Graduate Women in Science at the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. After obtaining her PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and undertaking post-doctoral work at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, she joined Roswell Park Cancer Institute before moving to the University of Rochester. Dr. Maquat’s research focuses on the molecular basis of human diseases, with particular interest in mechanisms of mRNA decay. Dr. Maquat discovered nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) in human diseases in 1981 and, subsequently, the exon-junction complex (EJC) and how the EJC marks mRNAs for a quality-control “pioneer” round of protein synthesis. She also discovered Staufen-mediated mRNA decay, which mechanistically competes with NMD and, by so doing, new roles for short interspersed elements and long non-coding RNAs. Additionally, she has defined a new mechanism by which microRNAs are degraded, thereby regulating mRNAs so as to promote the cell cycle.

Maquat is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2006); an elected Member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2006), the National Academy of Sciences (2011), and the National Academy of Medicine (2017); and a Batsheva de Rothschild Fellow of the Israel Academy of Sciences & Humanities (2012-3). She received the William C. Rose Award from the American Society for Biochemistry & Molecular Biology (2014), a Canada Gairdner International Award (2015), the international RNA Society Lifetime Achievement Award in Service (2010) and in Science (2017), the FASEB Excellence in Science Award (2018), the Vanderbilt Prize in Biomedical Science (2017), the Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences (2018), the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Medal (2019), and the Wolf Prize in Medicine (2021). Maquat is well-known for her efforts to promote women in science.

Joan Steitz

Joan Steitz | 2021 Recipient

Joan A. Steitz, Ph.D., is the Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University School of Medicine and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.Steitz earned her BS in chemistry from Antioch College in 1963. Significant findings from her work emerged as early as 1967, when her Harvard PhD thesis with Jim Watson examined the test-tube assembly of a ribonucleic acid (RNA) bacteriophage (antibacterial virus) known as R17.

Steitz spent the next three years in postdoctoral studies at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, where she used early methods for determining the biochemical sequence of RNA to study how ribosomes know where to initiate protein synthesis on bacterial mRNAs. In 1970, she was appointed assistant professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale, becoming full professor in 1978. At Yale, she established a laboratory dedicated to the study of RNA structure and function. In 1979, Steitz and her colleagues described a group of cellular particles called small nuclear ribonucleoproteins (snRNPs), a breakthrough in understanding how RNA is spliced. Subsequently, her laboratory has defined the structures and functions of other noncoding RNPs, such as those that guide the modification of ribosomal RNAs, microRNAs and several produced by transforming herpesviruses.

Steitz is an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society, National Academy of Sciences, and Institute of Medicine. Her many honors include the U.S. Steel Foundation Award in Molecular Biology (1982); National Medal of Science (1986); FASEB Excellence in Science Award (2003); RNA Society Lifetime Achievement Award (2004); Gairdner Foundation International Award (2006); Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research (2008) [shared with Elizabeth Blackburn]; Pearl Meister Greengard Prize (2012); La grande médaille 2013 de l'Académie des sciences, Insititut de France; Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London (2014); Herbert Tabor Award, American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (2015); Biopolymers Murray Goodman Memorial Prize, American Chemical Society (2015); William Clyde DeVane Award for Teaching Excellence, Yale University (2016); Jonathan Kraft Prize for Excellence in Cancer Research (2016); ASCB Inaugural Fellow (2016); Lasker~Koshland Special Achievement Award in Medical Science, the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation  (2018); and the Wolf Prize in Medicine (shared with Lynne Maquat and Adrian Krainer). Dr. Steitz has been awarded 19 honorary degrees.

Symposium Program

Each year the recipient(s) of the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize are recognized at a scientific symposium hosted by Harvard Medical School.

Opening Remarks

George Q. Daley, MD, PhD

Dean of Harvard Medical School; Caroline Shields Walker Professor of Medicine

Moderator

Karen Adelman, PhD

Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology; Harvard Medical School

Presentations

Phillip Sharp, PhD

Institute Professor, Koch Institute and Department of Biology Massachusetts Institute of Technology

RNA Condensates in Transcription and RNA Splicing

Joan Steitz, PhD

Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Yale University School of Medicine

Viral Noncoding RNAs: New Functions, New Structures

Lynne E. Maquat, PhD

J. Lowell Orbison Endowed Chair, Professor of Biochemistry & Biophysics University of Rochester Medical Center

Nonsense-mediated mRNA Decay and Human Disease: Guardian and Executor of Gene Expression

Eugene Yeo, PhD

Professor of Cellular & Molecular Medicine University of California San Diego

RNA binding proteins as regulators, drugs and drug targets

Melissa J. Moore, PhD

Chief Scientific Officer, Platform Research Moderna Therapeutics

RNA as Medicine

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Being awarded with the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize is an immense honor and a distinct privilege, that I wish to extend to all my collaborators and colleagues at DuPont.
- Philippe Horvath

Philippe Horvath | 2016 Recipient

Philippe Horvath is a senior scientist at DuPont.  He graduated from Université Louis-Pasteur, Strasbourg, France in 1996 and obtained his Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Biology in 2000. That same year, he was recruited by Rhodia Food and worked at the R&D center in Dangé-Saint-Romain, France, where he contributed to the development of molecular biology tools for bacterial strain screening, microbial identification, and typing of lactic acid bacteria and their bacteriophages.

Philippe became senior scientist in 2006, two years after Rhodia Food was acquired by the Danish company Danisco, a world leader in specialty food ingredients. In 2014, three years after DuPont acquired Danisco, Philippe was appointed Associate to the DuPont Fellows Forum, and further appointed DuPont Nutrition & Health Technical Fellow in 2015.

Since late 2002, a large part of Philippe’s research activities has been dedicated to CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats), first as a polymorphic chromosomal region useful for strain differentiation and tracking, and then as a bacterial immune system with considerable industrial, biotechnological, and medical applications. Philippe is co-inventor of 95 patents and/or patent applications, of which 62 are related to various uses of CRISPR, and co-author of 31 peer-reviewed articles (22 about CRISPR) and 4 book chapters. Together with other scientists in the company, Philippe was recognized with the 2008 Danisco Innovation Award, and with the 2013 Bolton/Carothers Innovative Science Award. In addition to being selected as a 2015 Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher, Philippe was awarded with the 2015 Massry Prize.

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