Malaysian Awarded By UK’s Royal Society For “Enormous Contributions” To Cancer Research
Dr Serena Nik-Zainal and her team were previously awarded what some dubbed the “Nobel Prize” for cancer research.
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Malaysians are doing well for themselves abroad and another to add to that group is scientist Dr Serena Nik-Zainal who was recently awarded the Francis Crick Medal and Lecture 2022 for her contributions to the current understanding of the causes of cancer.
The Francis Crick Medal and Lecture 2022 is awarded to @SerenaNikZainal for her enormous contributions to understanding the aetiology of cancers by her analyses of mutation signatures in cancer genomes, now being applied to cancer therapy. #RSMedals https://t.co/0NzxwgtYhz pic.twitter.com/zVwspGgjaF
— The Royal Society (@royalsociety) August 24, 2021
The Francis Crick Medal and Lecture is awarded annually in any field of biological science. Preference is given to fundamental, theoretical, and general work in areas such as genetics, molecular biology, and neurobiology – fields that one of Britain’s great scientists Francis Crick worked in.
To be more precise, Serena’s contributions are in the form of understanding the cause of cancers by her analyses of mutation signatures in cancer genomes, which is now applied to cancer therapy.
She will receive a medal and £2,000 (~RM11,564) at the associated prize lecture in 2022. This makes Dr Serena the 19th recipient of the prestigious award.
Who is Dr Serena Nik-Zainal?
Self-described on her Twitter as a “very curious, genetics doctor, genomics researcher”, Serena is currently a clinician-scientist based at Cambridge University’s Cancer Research UK and leads a research group that uses computational biology techniques to study mutations found in cancer cells.
Although the Royal Society UK did not mention any specific work that attributed to her award, it is noteworthy to mention that her team developed an algorithm classifier called MMRDetect, which can identify mutational signatures in cancer cells and figure out which repair pathways might have stopped working.
Having developed the algorithm, the plan now is to roll it out across all cancers picked up by Genomic England. To be most effective, the MMRDetect algorithm could be used as soon as a patient has received a cancer diagnosis and their tumour is characterised by genome sequencing.
Serena and her team believe that this tool could help to transform the way a wide range of cancers are treated.
Malaysiakini reports that Serena and her team were previously awarded the Dr Josef Steiner Award in 2019 for their research on mutations in cancer tumours which has been dubbed by some as the “Nobel Prize” for cancer research.
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