In various permutations, Charpentier, Doudna, and Zhang have hoovered up almost every major science prize, with two conspicuous exceptions: the Lasker Award, which is often referred to as America’s Nobel Prize and the Nobel Prize. Those appear to be a sure thing, but to whom and for what is a topic of much speculation.
The two women have shared the “Nobel Prizes” of Japan, Spain, Israel, and Canada (with Zhang), to name a few. The most lucrative award was the Breakthrough Prize, created by Silicon Valley billionaires including Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Sergey Brin (Google) and his ex-wife Anne Wojcicki (23andMe), and Dick Costolo (Twitter). At a black-tie awards ceremony in November 2014, Doudna and Charpentier received their awards from Hollywood actress Cameron Diaz. Charpentier flashed her Gallic humor on stage. “It’s kind of surreal to receive the prize from Cameron,” she said, then turned to Costolo: “Three powerful women… I was just wondering if you’re Charlie?”
Two years later, Charpentier and Doudna joined Barrangou, Horvath, and Zhang for the annual Canada Gairdner Awards, the most prestigious Canadian scientific honor. At the banquet dinner, it is a tradition for each awardee to choose their own walk-up music as they head to the stage to accept their award. Zhang naturally chose John Williams’s stately theme from Jurassic Park. He thanked his parents for their sacrifices on his behalf and his wife for keeping him company in the lab on late nights and for the birth of their daughter. Horvath selected a jazzy rendition of the Mission: Impossible theme. He joked that his scientific career began working on sauerkraut and quoted a famous French proverb: “Impossible n’est pas français.” Barrangou chose “Happy” by Pharrell Williams, mugging shamelessly for the cameras as he shimmied up to the stage in his trademark cowboy boots. Charpentier, by contrast, selected a moody slice of French electronica by Daft Punk.
The most interesting speech was by Doudna, who selected Billie Holiday’s “On the Sunny Side of the Street.” She thanked her students, colleagues and mentors, as well as her two special guests, husband-and-wife Harvard Medical School professors George Church and Ting Wu, for inspiring her when she was a student at Harvard. She also paid tribute to Church’s under-recognized work in CRISPR. “His work has had a huge impact on the gene editing field over the years, including adapting the CRISPR-Cas system for gene editing in mammalian cells.”11 (Some might wonder if she wasn’t throwing some shade in the direction of Zhang and Lander, who was also a guest at the dinner.) Then she announced that she was donating her $100,000 award to the nonprofit organization for genomics education cofounded by Wu and Church.
In a photograph from that evening, Barrangou stands at the center of the CRISPR quintet, his boots putting him a head taller than his peers. (Also in the group was another awardee, Anthony Fauci, recognized for global health.) The Gairdner was the undoubted highlight of his career, recognition for a landmark study that fermented the CRISPR revolution. Doudna and Charpentier were deservedly recognized for developing the single-guide RNA technology—the tipping point as he calls it.12 “Single-guide RNA is an invention—it’s novel, not obvious, not natural. They didn’t just recapitulate it like Virgis. They engineered it, they designed it.” But genome editing is not until 2013, when “George and Feng and Luciano and Jin-Soo Kim and eventually Jennifer show that.”
Horvath shared the Massry Prize with Doudna and Charpentier in 2015 and Harvard’s Alpert Prize with Barrangou, Charpentier, Doudna, and Šikšnys. “I have mostly been in the shadow of Charpentier and Doudna, but not for the Bower,” he told me. The 2018 Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science was perhaps his greatest honor. Created in 1824, prizes have been bestowed on more than 2,000 scientists and inventors, including Tesla, Edison, Einstein, Hawking, Church, and Bill Gates. Horvath’s citation read:
For the foundational discovery of the role of CRISPR-Cas as a microbial system of adaptive immunity that has been developed as a powerful tool for precise editing of diverse genomes.
Horvath said his awards had created “some stress” among his colleagues, but I also sense that he feels his contributions haven’t been adequately recognized. “I recognize that the real interest is in the gene-editing aspect, and it’s possible that we’ll forget those who discovered the natural bacterial system and remember only the final developers of tools that allow this revolution,” he told me. Horvath also spares a thought for Jínek and Chyliński, the bench scientists who led the CRISPR breakthrough in 2012. “Maybe their defect is not to be women,” he said in a flash of political incorrectness. “Currently there is a demand for women in science. There is a positive discrimination for women in science. It’s good,” he says quickly, “but there might be some drawbacks to that. As soon as you have a woman who is at this level who gets the recognition, it’s obvious.”
A fun ritual each September is to predict the next group of Nobel laureates. For CRISPR, it is surely a matter of when, not if. A maximum of three people can share the award for each category. And you have to be alive.V Some might argue that Nobels have already been awarded for gene targeting, the forerunner of genome editing, shared by Mario Capecchi, Oliver Smithies and Martin Evans in 2007 (for “introducing specific gene modifications in mice”). Perhaps the prize will go to the disciples of genome editing “before CRISPR”, whom we’ll meet in the next chapter.
Barrangou thinks people are asking the wrong question: it’s not when, or whom, but for which discovery. In other words, which committee? Chemistry or Medicine? If the award goes for chemistry, then the development of the sgRNA favors Doudna and Charpentier, but a strong case can be made for Šikšnys, who shared the Kavli Prize, or Jínek, who performed the signature sgRNA experiments. If it’s for the discovery of Cas9, then maybe Moineau. If the award is given for physiology or medicine, then it must go for genome editing, most likely Zhang and Church. “George was right there!” says Barrangou. “He’s been written off the books of history for no reason. You can’t keep George out of that, that’s crazy.”13 But for all its potential, CRISPR-Cas—indeed the entire field of genome editing—still has to prove itself as a game-changing, life-saving therapeutic.
Luciano Marraffini’s key role in helping Zhang kick-start his CRISPR program in 2012 was omitted from Lander’s “heroes” narrative. The affable Argentine’s technical expertise was central to the gene-editing discovery but, with the exception of the 2017 Albany Prize, has largely fallen under the radar. At the Albany Prize ceremony, Marraffini shared the stage with Mojica, who was asked to reflect on life as the grandfather of CRISPR. It was like adopting a child. “You give it a nice name—CRISPR,” he said. “You’re very proud of this child. It feels like [someone] that belongs to you, even though it’s not true. You try to look after them.” After ten years, the child becomes “a very clever person,” and then “a very important person.” Overall, he said, “I feel full of joy, I feel happy, I feel proud.”14
As for the Nobel speculation, Mojica wishes it could be put to rest. “If I get it, I will disappear from the planet,” he says.15 Of course, if he gets it, there is not the slightest chance of that happening.
While the developers of genome editing rack up accolades, the task of improving the original CRISPR system and expanding the CRISPR toolbox marches on. The potential of CRISPR has inspired thousands of new researchers around the world to study the fundamental biology of CRISPR and apply it in a host of settings including new forms of therapy.16