ESACT Innovation Award

The work of Prof. Nicole Borth (BOKU DBT) and collaborators Prof.s Mike Betenbaugh (Johns Hopkins University), Kelvin H Lee (the University of Delaware) and Nathan Lewis (UCSD) on establishing a publicly available database on the genome of Chinese Hamster Ovary cells has enabled significant progress over the last 10 years in the large scale and affordable production of therapeutic proteins such as antibodies. In particular the jury acknowledged that a driving factor in these endeavours was the change in mindset of both academia and industry that strengthened data sharing and collaboration – it was clearly understood and appreciated that the outcome of joint efforts is so much more than the sum of the individual contributions. In this spirit, all recipients agreed that the award money of 5000 € shall be donated to a patient support initiative located at the cancer hospital in Edinburgh.