The $400,000 award recognizes
the far-reaching medical impacts of Studier's development, in the
1980s, of an efficient and scalable technology to produce mass
amounts of RNA and proteins in laboratories that is widely used
today all over the world
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 14, 2024
/PRNewswire/ -- F. William Studier
of Brookhaven National Laboratory has won the second annual Richard
N. Merkin Prize in Biomedical Technology for his development of an
efficient, scalable method of producing RNA and proteins in the
laboratory. His T7 expression technology can be used to make large
quantities of nearly any RNA or protein and has been for decades,
and continues to be, a mainstay of biomedical research and
pharmaceutical production. The approach has been used to produce
numerous therapeutics, diagnostics, and vaccines — including the
COVID-19 mRNA vaccines credited with extending millions of lives in
recent years.
"F. William Studier's brilliant
work on the T7 system transformed biomedicine, saving millions of
lives globally and improving the chances for further research that
will change healthcare delivery," said Dr. Richard Merkin, CEO and
Founder of Heritage Provider Network, one of the country's largest
physician-owned integrated health care systems. "His work
exemplifies why I created this prize initiative that honors and
showcases amazing innovators like Bill. I'm honored to be
celebrating his remarkable achievements."
The Merkin Prize, which recognizes novel technologies that have
improved human health, carries a $400,000 cash award and is administered by the
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, one of the world's leading biomedical
research institutes. All nominations for the 2024 Merkin Prize were
evaluated by a selection committee, composed of nine scientific
leaders from academia and industry in the US and Europe. Studier will be honored in a prize
ceremony held on September 17,
2024.
"The T7 system has been influential in biomedicine and has had
important clinical implications for many years, but Bill Studier's contribution to the field has
really not been as celebrated as it ought to be," said Harold
Varmus, chair of the Merkin Prize selection committee. Varmus is
also the Lewis Thomas University
Professor at Weill Cornell Medicine, a senior associate at the New
York Genome Center, and a recipient of the Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine for his work on the origins of cancer.
"Bill Studier's development of T7
phage RNA polymerase for use in preparing RNA templates for
multiple uses in research labs worldwide has been a truly
revolutionary technical advance for the entire field of molecular
biology," says Joan Steitz, the
Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at
Yale University.
"Today, virtually every protein you want to produce in bacteria
is made with a T7 system," says Venki
Ramakrishnan of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in
Cambridge, England, and a winner
of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. "There's not a single
molecular biology or biochemistry lab I know that doesn't use
T7."
Driven by basic biology
Studier grew up in Iowa and
became fascinated with biophysics while an undergraduate at
Yale University. Then, during graduate
school at the California Institute of
Technology in the early 1960s, he was introduced to
bacteriophage T7, a virus that infects Escherichia
coli bacteria. He wondered how T7 could so effectively and
quickly take over E. coli, rapidly turning the bacterial
cells into factories to produce more T7. That question launched a
career focused on the basic biology of T7.
"I've always been interested in solving problems," Studier told
Brookhaven National Laboratory in a 2011 profile. "The motivation
for my research is not commercial application. My interest is in
basic research."
When he launched his own lab at Brookhaven National Laboratory
in 1964, Studier focused on sequencing the genes of the T7
bacteriophage and understanding the function of each of its
corresponding proteins during infection of E. coli. By 1984,
he and Brookhaven colleague John
Dunn successfully identified and cloned the protein within
T7 that was responsible for rapidly copying T7 DNA into many
corresponding strands of RNA — a critical step in the
bacteriophage's ability to infect E. coli.
Studier realized that the protein, called the T7 RNA polymerase,
might be able to quickly and efficiently produce RNA from not only
T7 DNA, but also from the genes of any organism. If a gene was
tagged with a special DNA sequence, known as the T7 promoter, then
the T7 RNA polymerase would latch on and begin copying it. In 1986,
Studier described this system in the Journal of Molecular
Biology.
"His work really illustrates that sometimes a remarkable
technology can emerge not only from people trying to build
technologies but from someone who is trying to use basic science to
understand a fascinating biological phenomenon," says Varmus.
Speeding science
Before Studier's development of the T7 system, scientists who
wanted to produce RNA or proteins generally inserted the genes into
the natural E. coli genome and let the E. coli
polymerase produce the corresponding RNA at the same time as the
bacteria produced its own RNA and proteins. But the E. coli
machinery was relatively slow, and scientists often ran into
problems with the bacteria turning off their DNA-reading programs.
T7 polymerase overcame both these problems: it was far faster and
E. coli had no built-in way to shut it off.
Within a few years, biologists had rapidly switched from their
older methods to the T7 system for producing both RNA and proteins.
When proteins are the desired end result, the E. coli
molecular machinery for translating mRNA into proteins is used
after the T7 system makes the RNA.
Studier continued studying the T7 polymerase and promoter,
fine-tuning the system for years, and publishing new improved
versions as recently as 2018.
As of 2020, the T7 technology had been cited in more than
220,000 published studies, with 12,000 new studies using the
technology published each year. There are more than 100 different
versions of the T7 technology available commercially and 12 patents
in Studier's name related to the system.
Making medicine
The T7 technology has also had immediate impacts in industry,
with more than 900 biotech and pharmaceutical companies licensing
it to produce therapeutics and vaccines.
In 2020, scientists used the T7 platform to produce enough mRNA
for COVID-19 vaccines to vaccinate millions of people in the U.S.
and around the world. With the T7 promoter placed next to the gene
for the COVID-19 spike protein, the T7 polymerase could generate
many kilograms of mRNA — the active molecule in the vaccines — at a
time.
"I think it's an incredible testament to this technology that,
decades after its development, it's still the go-to method for RNA
and protein production," says John
Shanklin, a distinguished biochemist and Chair of Biology at
Brookhaven National Laboratory, who considered Studier a mentor for
many years.
Those who know Studier say the Merkin Prize is well-deserved;
Studier changed the course of biomedicine while working quietly on
basic science questions that interested him.
"Almost no one has heard of Bill
Studier because he is a quiet, modest guy who had a small
lab," says Ramakrishnan, who worked with Studier at Brookhaven in
the 1980s. "But he is an absolutely fantastic role model of what a
scientist should be like."
"He has flown under the radar and hasn't been recognized for his
accomplishments very much," agrees Shanklin. "This is a
well-deserved honor."
Studier was also committed to guaranteeing access to his
technology. When Brookhaven was in the process of licensing and
commercializing the T7 system shortly after its development,
Studier ensured that it remained free for academic labs while
charging commercial licensing fees to companies.
Studier is a Senior Biophysicist Emeritus at Brookhaven National
Laboratory and has been elected to the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
and the National Academy of Inventors. He retired from the lab in
2015 and lives with his wife in California, where he still plays tennis at age
88.
Nominations for the 2025 Merkin Prize open on August 5, 2024. Visit merkinprize.org for more
information.
About the Merkin Family Foundation
The Merkin Family
Foundation was founded by visionary health care executive Richard
Merkin, MD.
Richard Merkin, MD is the founder and CEO of Heritage Provider
Network, Inc. (HPN). HPN is one of the largest physician founded
and physician owned managed care organizations in the country
dedicated to value-based healthcare delivery improvements. HPN
develops and manages coordinated, patient-doctor centric,
integrated health care systems that offer some of the strongest
solutions for the future of health, care, and cost in the United States. HPN and its affiliates
operate in New York, California, and Arizona, providing high-quality,
cost-effective healthcare with over one million patient members.
HPN is dedicated to quality, affordable health care, and putting
patients' wellness first.
About Broad Institute of MIT and
Harvard
Broad Institute was
launched in 2004 to empower this generation of scientists to
transform medicine. The Broad Institute seeks to describe the
molecular components of life and their connections; discover the
molecular basis of major human diseases; develop approaches to
diagnostics and therapeutics; and disseminate discoveries, tools,
methods, and data to the entire scientific community.
Founded by MIT, Harvard, Harvard-affiliated hospitals, and the visionary
Los Angeles philanthropists
Eli and Edythe L. Broad, the Broad
Institute includes faculty, professional staff, and students from
throughout the MIT and Harvard biomedical research communities and beyond,
with collaborations spanning over 100 private and public
institutions in more than 40 countries worldwide.
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