Jennifer Doudna, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley, won the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for her pioneering research in CRISPR gene editing. She is receiving the prize with Emmanuelle Charpentier of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens in Berlin.
Doudna and Charpentier discovered that the CRISPR-Cas9 protein works as genetic scissors, which researchers can use to make changes to the DNA. Their research can contribute to new cancer therapies and represents a major advancement towards curing genetic diseases such as sickle cell disease.