University of Colorado at Boulder chemistry and biochemistry Professor Marvin Caruthers will receive the nation's highest accolade for scientific achievement, the National Medal of Science, during a White House ceremony next week.
One of CU-Boulder's Distinguished Professors, Caruthers is a biotechnology pioneer and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.
He is one of eight 2006 National Medal of Science award winners and five 2006 National Medal of Technology winners announced yesterday by President George W. Bush. The president will honor Caruthers and all of the other laureates in Washington, D.C., on Friday, July 27.
"This is indeed a great honor. Receiving the National Medal of Science demonstrates how the University of Colorado continues to provide an excellent environment and academic climate for basic research at the cutting edge of science," said Caruthers, who has taught in the university's chemistry and biochemistry department for 34 years.
Caruthers is the fourth CU-Boulder faculty member to receive the award. The late Professor Gilbert E. White, a Distinguished Professor emeritus of geography, won in 2000; Nobel laureate and Distinguished Professor of chemistry Thomas R. Cech won in 1995; and the late biology Professor Keith Roberts Porter won in 1976.
Caruthers is being recognized for his lifetime accomplishments as a chemistry professor, researcher and biotechnology innovator. His major scientific achievement is his pioneering research in nucleic acid chemistry resulting in new methods that are universally used for the chemical synthesis of DNA and RNA.
The rapid, chemical synthesis of DNA and RNA is one of the cornerstone technologies that have fueled the development of biotechnology, basic research in biology, and pharmacology worldwide. It is required for sequencing genomes, isolating genes that are pharmaceutically useful, diagnosing diseases using DNA chips and forensic "DNA fingerprinting."
Caruthers is the past chairman of his department and serves on various college and university committees. CU-Boulder named him a Distinguished Professor of chemistry in 1999.
In 1980, he co-founded two major biotechnology companies, including Applied Biosystems, which marketed "gene machines" based on the DNA synthesis methods developed in Caruthers' laboratory. The other was Amgen, a Thousand Oaks, Calif.-based human therapeutics firm that operates drug-manufacturing plants in Longmont and Boulder and has more than 10,000 employees worldwide.
Amgen is credited with developing blockbuster medicines used widely to treat anemia, rheumatoid arthritis and for supportive cancer care. Caruthers continues to be active locally in the biotechnology arena as a consultant for Boulder Ventures. In addition, he serves on the board of directors for Array Biopharma and Barofold, and on the scientific advisory board for Alphasniffer, Agilent and Nanosphere Inc.
"I find it very rewarding to be able to carry out basic research at the University of Colorado and then to develop from this research commercial products that save lives and improve our ability to understand our biology," Caruthers said.
Caruthers is a graduate of Iowa State University who received his doctorate at Northwestern University. He holds multiple biotechnology patents.
Aside from the National Medal of Science, Caruthers has received 11 other honors, including the National Academy of Sciences Award for Chemistry in Service to Society in 2005. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow since 1981.
For more information about the National Medal of Science, visit . To learn more about chemistry and biochemistry at CU-Boulder, go to .