Awards

Mandy was awarded the Innosuisse Innovation grant to fund her translational work on developing gene therapies for hereditary blood diseases. This grant will support the expansion of her team and research.

X Close

Mandy received the BRIDGE Proof-of-Concept grant for her research on hemoglobin diseases. The BRIDGE programme is jointly offered by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and Innosuisse.

X Close

One of our postdocs, Amos Liang, will be setting up his own research group at the Medical Research Council-Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit (MRC-PPU) at the University of Dundee in June 2022. His group will expand on his previous work to understand the mechanisms and physiological roles of endoplasmic reticulum turnover via autophagy using CRISPR-based gene editing and genome-wide screening technology, fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS), mass spectrometry, fluorescence microscopy, and biochemical studies. We wish him all the best and we are excited for what the future holds for his new lab!

For more information on the research focus of Amos’ group, please visit here.

X Close

Dani received the Helen Hay Whitney Fellowship The Helen Hay Whitney Foundation and her research goals are to develop new technologies that advance our understanding of fundamental biology, as well as increase the safety and efficacy of gene editing in human cells. She plans to approach this in two ways. First, how does chromatin state affect CRISPR-Cas activity at a single cell level? Second, can we manipulate the chromatin landscape to increase gene-editing strategies?

X Close

Congratulations to Mandy and team for winning the audience vote at the ETH 3Pi Pitch Competition, where ETH Pioneer Fellows pitched their projects to an audience of 100 people in the startup community: https://www.startupticker.ch/en/news/eth-zurich-awards-best-pitches

X Close

We are excited to share the news that Eric Aird and John Fielden were both awarded EMBO long-term fellowships, which support excellent postdoctoral researchers throughout Europe and the world. Congratulations both!

X Close

Moritz was awarded a Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds (BIF) PhD Fellowship for his project to understand cell type-specific DNA repair preferences during genome editing. The Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds supports the most talented young researchers worldwide whose PhD or MD projects are aimed at experimentally elucidating basic phenomena of human life. Congratulations to Moritz!

X Close

Magda is a Ph.D. student at the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry Polish Academy of Sciences. In this academic year, she received the Etiuda 8 grant which is dedicated to young scientists who want to do an internship abroad. Magda has been using CRISPR-Cas9 technology to shorten mutated CAG repeat tract in genes associated with polyQ disorders. Her scholarship is scheduled for 6 months.

X Close

IGI Scientific Director of Biomedicine Jacob Corn has received the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award that provides $1.5 million over five years to pursue high-risk, high-reward work that could have implications for human health. The National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) High-Risk, High-Reward Research program, part of the NIH Common Fund, funded 86 awards to exceptionally creative scientists proposing to use highly innovative approaches to tackle major challenges in biomedical research.

Corn lab will use CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to explore how cells recycle damaged organs, such as mitochondria. Dysfunction in organelle autophagy has been implicated in diverse diseases, including neurodegeneration, lysosomal storage disorders and cancer.  Corn lab will use next- generation CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing and regulation technologies, combined with cellular biochemistry and imaging to discover the pathways that signal for the remodeling and lysosomal degradation of multiple organelles.  Our work will reveal the mechanisms by which cells maintain organelle homeostasis and respond to organelle damage or stress, which could suggest new strategies to treat diseases associated with improper organelle autophagy.

X Close