Sir Gregory Winter wins the Royal Society’s Copley Medal
Croucher Foundation is delighted to learn that Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist Sir Gregory Winter FRS, Chairman and Trustee of Noel Croucher Foundation and best known for his work on monoclonal antibodies, has been named as this year’s recipient of the Royal Society’s Copley medal.
The Copley Medal is the world’s oldest scientific award, dating from 1731. It is awarded for sustained, outstanding achievements in any field of science, and previous recipients include Louis Pasteur, Dorothy Hodgkin, Albert Einstein, and Charles Darwin.
Sir Gregory was chosen for pioneering protein engineering, especially antibody engineering for the successful production of therapeutic antibodies.
After studying Natural Sciences at Trinity College Cambridge, he went on to pursue a career at the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Centre for Protein Engineering, specialising in protein and nucleic acid sequencing. He played an important role in sequencing the genome of influenza before inventing techniques for the industrial production of human antibodies for therapeutic purposes. Humanised monoclonal antibodies now make up most of the antibody-based drugs on the market today.
Sir Gregory received a knighthood for services to molecular biology in 2004 and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2018. Accepting the Medal, he said: “It is such an honour to be awarded this ancient prize and find myself on the same scroll as the greatest scientists; such a delight to find myself in the same company as friends and former mentors; and such a relief not to be asked for a manuscript!”
You can find more about the award on the Royal Society’s website and read Sir Gregory’s Croucher profile here.