Ghislain HEOUTCHOU’s Post

Friday afternoon I had the absolute pleasure of attending the Novo Nordisk Foundation event for the Novo Nordisk Prize. The Prize this year went to Sir Shankar Balasubramanian and Sir David Klenerman from University of Cambridge, UK. The Prize was awarded for the absolutely amazing ground-breaking contributions to high-speed, robust and affordable DNA sequencing. They co-invented Next Generation Sequencing. It is hard to imagine anybody who has done work that has changed medical research as much as these two people. They met over a cup of tea, paired up by a mutual acquaintance, discussing how to respond to a reviewers request to a scientific paper. They did not set out to do what they ended up doing, but they did realise the potential along the way early on, at the Panton Arms pub! So British! Their invention with substantially improved ability to sequence DNA has transformed cancer treatment, treatment of rare diseases, our ability to act based on science during the pandemic, and even forensic science has been transformed. But my luck did not stop there on Friday. At this event there is also a musical performance, and this time it was my all-time idol Tim Christensen, singer-song writer version this time (he also comes as lead rocker in Dizzy Miss Lizzy). He played this beautiful song of his "Right next to the right one" which I am sure was selected for the occasion to these two scientist-inventors. https://lnkd.in/dQvGZRGD.