The Biochemical Technology Division of the American Chemical Society Presents Six Awards

BIOT Division Awards 2007

Weichang Zhou, ACS BIOT Awards Chair

The Biochemical Technology (BIOT) Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) will present six division awards at the ACS national meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, August 19-23, 2007. These awards are the David Perlman Lecture, the Marvin J. Johnson Award, the James M. Van Lanen Distinguished Service Award, the Industrial Biotechnology Award, Alan S Michaels Award for the Recovery of Biological Products, and Young Investigator Award. In addition, the 2006 W.H. Peterson Award and Elmer Gaden Award will also be presented in this year’s BIOT division program. The Awards selection process starts with nominations by our division members. Nomination packages are reviewed and judged by individual selection committees, which decide the winner for the Awards. Details about these Awards, their nomination and selection process can be found at our division website: http://membership.acs.org/b/biochem/awards.html.

The David Perlman Lecture

The BIOT division selected Susan Lindquist, Member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Professor of Biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator to deliver this year's Perlman Lecture. This award, which is sponsored by Genzyme Corp., recognizes many of Professor Lindquist's achievements including her contributions in the area of protein folding and nanotechnology. In particular, her research provided strong evidence for a new paradigm in genetics based upon the inheritance of proteins with new, self-perpetuating shapes rather than new DNA sequences. Her award lecture titled "Prion Proteins and How They Fold" is scheduled for August 19.

Professor Lindquist is a member, and former Director, of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. Previously she was the Albert D. Lasker Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Chicago. She received her PhD in Biology from Harvard in 1976 and was a postdoctoral fellow of the American Cancer Society. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1997 and the Institute of Medicine in 2006. Lindquist’s honors also include the Dickson Prize in Medicine, the Sigma Xi William Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement, and designation by Scientific American as one of the top 50 leaders in business, policy, and research for 2006.

The Marvin J. Johnson Award in Microbial and Biochemical Technology

This year’s winner of the Marvin J. Johnson Award in Microbial and Biochemical Technology is Jonathan S. Dordick, the Howard P. Isermann Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). This award, which is sponsored by Pfizer, Inc., recognizes many of Professor Dordick’s achievements leading to functional bioengineered materials, enzyme-based nanocomposites, and bioactive agents that impact human health and bioprocesses. Professor Dordick will receive the award and present the award lecture titled “Molecular Bioprocessing: From Design to Discovery to Dreams" on August 21.

Professor Dordick received a Ph.D. in Biochemical Engineering in 1986 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He began his academic career at the University of Iowa in the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering as an Assistant Professor and moved through the ranks to become department chairman in 1995. At Iowa he held a joint appointment in the College of Pharmacy’s Medicinal and Natural Products Chemistry program, and he served as the founding Associate Director of the Center for Biocatalysis and Bioprocessing. He joined the Rensselaer faculty in 1998 and served as the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department chairman for four years. Professor Dordick also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Biology at RPI. Professor Dordick has received the 2003 International Enzyme Engineering Award, the Elmer Gaden Award honoring the best publication in 2006 in “Biotechnology & Bioengineering”, and the 1998 Iowa Section Award from the ACS. He was elected a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 1996, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2004. Professor Dordick has made numerous significant contributions to the field of biotechnology. He co-founded EnzyMed, Inc., a pharmaceutical discovery company now part of Albany Molecular, and also co-founded Solidus Biosciences, a venture-stage biotechnology company. Professor Dordick is currently an associate editor for Biotechnology & Bioengineering and also serves on the editorial boards of several other journals. He served as a chair of the BIOT Division in 1992 and was the BIOT Program Chair in 1989 and 1990.

The James M. Van Lanen Distinguished Service Award

This year’s winner of the BIOT James M. Van Lanen Distinguished Service Award is Eleftherios Terry Papoutsakis, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the Northwestern University and of July 1, 2007 Eugene DuPont Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Delaware, Newark, DE. The award recognizes Terry’s dedication and leadership on many fronts, but especially as the division awards chair between 1998 and 2005 and as a very active contributor to the division’s success over many years.

Professor Papoutsakis graduated with a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University in 1980 and began his academic career at the Rice University. In 1987, he joined the Northwestern University as an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, and was later promoted to Professor and appointed Walter P. Murphy Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the Northwestern University. On July 1, 2007, he joins the University of Delaware as Eugene DuPont Professor. Professor Papoutsakis has received many prestigious awards and honors including the Amgen Biochemical Engineering Award in 2005, Merck Cell Culture Engineering Award in 2004, Alpha Chi Sigma Award of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers in 2003, Marvin Johnson Award of the American Chemical Society, Biochemical Technology Division in 1998. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1998 and a Fellow of The American Academy of Microbiology in 2005. Professor Papoutsakis served as Editor in Chief between 1990 and 1995 for Biotechnology & Bioengineering and later as an Associate Editor and Editorial Board member.

The Industrial Biotechnology Award

BIOT will present the Industrial Biotechnology Award to the Genetech Lucentis® Development CMC Team for the achievements in developing the manufacturing process for the potent vision restoring drug ranibizumab (Lucentis®). Dr. John Joly, Director of Early Stage Cell Culture, Process Development will accept the award and present the award lecture titled “A Vision Saving Therapy made by Biotechnology” on August 20.

Lucentis® is a humanized antibody fragment to Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) which is produced using E coli fermentation technology. Lucentis® is designed to bind to and inhibit VEGF, a protein that plays a role in angiogenesis (the formation of new blood vessel). Lucentis® offers vision improvement to patients with the devastating condition of wet age-related macular degeneration and received FDA approval in June 2006 for commercialization. Lucentis® is one of the most successful biotechnology commercial launches treating approximately 60,000 patients and generating $380 millions in product sales in the first six months of approval. The Genetech Lucentis® Development CMC Team developed a state-of-the-art manufacturing process for producing a highly homogenous protein containing very low impurities. Both drug product and drug substance are homogenous as assayed by size exclusion chromatography, ion exchange chromatography and capillary electrophoresis. The production process involves the use of E. coli fermentation in a 1000 L bioreactor and seven downstream processing steps including homogenization, centrifugation, four chromatographic steps: cation exchange, hydrophobic interaction, a mixed-mode ion exchange, and anion exchange, and ultrafiltration/diafiltration. The formulated drug product is stored as a liquid at 2-8 oC and shows excellent stability.

The Alan S Michaels Award for the Recovery of Biological Products

Maria-Regina Kula, Professor and Former Director of Institute of Enzyme Technology, Heinrich-Heine Dusseldorf, Germany is the second recipient of the Alan S Michaels Award for the Recovery of Biological Products. This award, established in 2006, is sponsored by the Recovery of Biological Products Conference Series, which Dr. Alan Michaels helped to start in 1981. This award recognizes Professor Kula’s outstanding contributions for 40 years to the understanding and practice of enzyme-based chemical processes and protein separations for the recovery of biologicals, excellence in science, and to education and inspiration of a generation of bioprocessing scientists and engineers. She will present the award lecture titled “Early steps in protein recovery - the messy part of a clean industry” on August 19.

Professor Kula received a Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1962 from Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, Germany. With a continuing education scholarship from the German Research Council she studied Molecular Biology as a Post Doc at Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine 1964-67. She was head of the Department of Enzyme Technology at the Society for Biotechnology Research in Braunschweig, Germany between 1969 and 1985. In the subsequent 16 years, she was Professor and Director of Institute of Enzyme Technology, Heinrich-Heine Dusseldorf, Germany. Professor Kula has received many prestigious awards and honors including National Medal 1st class in 1997 and Presidential “Future Award” in 2002 from the German government. She was elected into the US National Academy of Engineering as a Foreign Associate member in 2002 and acatech, the German National Academy of Technical Sciences in 2005.

The Young Investigator Award

Patrick S. Daugherty, an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering (as of July 1) at the University of California at Santa Barbara is the second recipient of the ACS BIOT Young Investigator Award. This award, established in 2006 and sponsored by Genentech, intends to recognize an outstanding young contributor to the field of biochemical technology and active participant in the division programs. This year’s award recognizes Professor Daugherty’s outstanding contributions to the field of protein engineering including the development of novel peptide display methodologies, fluorescent protein sensors, and library screening methodologies. Daugherty has applied these new tools to investigate and engineer the specificity of protein-peptide interactions in complex biological environments for diagnostic and therapeutic applications. The award will be presented on August 22, followed by the award lecture titled “Building proteins with new therapeutic functions from peptide modules”.

Professor Daugherty received a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in 1999 from University at Texas at Austin. After a postdoctoral research at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, he joined University of California at Santa Barbara in 2001 as an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering. He also became an Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Science and Engineering in 2002. Daugherty is also a Team Leader for the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies and an affiliate member of the California NanoSystems Institute. Professor Daugherty has received many awards including a Cottage Hospital Research Award in 2003, National Science Foundation Career Award in 2005, and Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award in 2006.

The Elmer Gaden Award

Jonathan S. Dordick, the Howard P. Isermann Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) will receive the Elmer Gaden Award honoring his 2006 publication in “Biotechnology & Bioengineering”. The award is sponsored by John Wiley & Sons and is presented for a paper of exceptional originality and likely impact. Professor Dordick will present the award lecture entitled "Directing the Assembly of Multifunctional Biomolecular Architectures” on August 22nd, which is based on a paper co-authored by Dr. Grazyna Sroga at RPI. In this paper, the authors present a paradigm for exploiting biological systems to control the molecular assembly of multiple biological and nonbiological architectures at nanoscale dimensions.

The W.H. Peterson Award

The W.H. Peterson Award is granted each year by the Division of Biochemical Technology to student members who present outstanding research work in sessions sponsored by the division at ACS national meetings. The 2006 Award was organized by Gargi Maheshwari and Katerina Kourentzi, and sponsored by Gibco Cell Culture, Invitrogen. The winner of the 2006 Peterson Award for the best oral presentation is Brian Timko, a Graduate Student from Professor Charles Lieber's lab at Harvard University for his presentation titled "Designing and implementing an electronic interface between nanowires and neurons" at the 2006 ACS meeting in San Francisco, California. No award was given for the best poster presentation given by a student in 2006.