Francis Stewart awarded international prize in transgenic technologies

Prize for Transgenic Technologies goes to Australian Professor, based in Germany

Australian Francis Stewart from the Biotechnology Center of the TU Dresden, Germany received the Prize of the International Society for Transgenic Technologies (ISTT) for his outstanding achievements in the area of genetic engineering.

The hard work of the last 20 years has paid off: Prof Francis Stewart has been awarded the “Prize for Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Transgenic Technologies” at the 2010 meeting of the International Society for Transgenic Technologies (ISTT), this March in Berlin, Germany.

The jury selected Stewart for his innovative and pioneering work in developing methods of genetic engineering. Since 2001 the ISTT has awarded excellent researchers this prize, endowed with 3000 Euros and a silver trophey designed by the Hungarian artist Bela Rozsnyay.

Prof Stewart recently spent his sabbatical at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute.

Prof Stewart and his lab have developed a new technology of “recombineering”, a method that allows the engineering of large DNA molecules. Although the methods of traditional DNA engineering – based on restriction sites - are milestones of Molecular Biology, they are limited to relatively small DNA molecules. Stewart’s new method is based on homologous recombination (a biomolecular method for the manipulation of DNA) and constitutes a new logic for each task in DNA engineering. This technology is less workintense than conventional methods, and therefore offers savings in time and costs. Francis Stewart was acclaimed by the jury as an excellent example in the area of genetic engineering. “He combines extraordinary molecular biology skills with exceptional vision,” said the ISTT.

Francis Stewart received his PhD at the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia) in 1986. He then did postdoctoral work at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg, Germany before becoming a Group Leader at the European Molecular Biology
Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany from 1991-2001. In 2000, he founded the company Gene Bridges GmbH, as a spin-off of EMBL. In 2001 he assumed his current position as Professor of Genomics at the Biotechnology Center TU Dresden, Germany.

In 2009 / 2010 he spent a 4-month sabbatical at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute.

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