Andrew Ellington, Ph.D.
Andrew Ellington worked with the renowned Jack Szostak to develop the SELEX method. He is credited with coining the word "aptamer."
Ellington began working at the University of Texas at Austin in 1998 and currently is the Professor of Biochemistry.
He is a recipient of the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator, Cottrell, and Pew Scholar awards.
Ellington continues research on SELEX and aptamers, and maintains a blog detailing this research.
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Larry Gold, Ph.D.
Larry Gold, along with Andrew Ellington, is credited with developing the SELEX process - they would receive a patent in 1993. This would set in motion events that would result in the development of aptamers.
Gold has been a Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder since 1970. He served as department chair of the Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology Department at the university from 1988 to 1992.
He was a founder of NeXagen Inc., which later became NeXstar Pharmaceuticals, Inc., which would then merge with Gilead Sciences in 1999.
Innovators: The Scientists
Larry Gold in the lab
Larry Gold in the lab
Gold and Tuerk were awarded the 2006 European Inventors of the Year Award in the Non-Europeans category for their discovery of SELEX.
Gold is involved in many companies, including the late Archemix, BT Pharma, BioForce Nanosystems, CompleGen, and MicroPhage. He is CEO, founder, and chairman of the board at SomaLogic.
His citations include the CU Distinguished Lectureship Award, the National Institutes of Health Merit Award, the Career Development Award, and the Chiron Prize for Biotechnology. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.
He continues to be involved in aptamer research and development to this day.
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Andrew Ellington in the lab
Andrew Ellington in the lab
Craig Tuerk, Ph.D.
1994 - well before SELEX was capable of producing anything of therapeutic value.
He went on to teach at Morehead State University in Kentucky, teaching biochemistry and genetics. He is currently the Professor of Biology.
He lists "In vitro evolution strategies; combinatorial libraries and drug design" as research interests.
Gold and Tuerk were awarded the 2006 European Inventors of the Year Award in the Non-Europeans category for their discovery of SELEX.
Craig Tuerk, faculty portrait
Craig Tuerk, faculty portrait
Craig Tuerk worked alongside Larry Gold to develop SELEX at University of Colorado Boulder. The two would be granted the patent for SELEX in 1993.
Tuerk would take a different career path then Gold. He left NeXagen Inc., the aptamer company the two founded, in
Jack Szostak, Ph.D.
Jack Szostak is a renowned genetics and molecular biology researcher who has devoted his life to the understanding of how life originated.
His research has included telomeres, the tips of chromosomes that play a role in aging. His research in the 80's on telomeres would win him the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine 2009 along with two other researchers.
His search to understand how RNAs work and their role in the origins of life led him in 1991 to research the evolution of RNAs in vitro in test tubes. Simultaneously with Gold and Tuerk, Szostak would develop this in vitro selection of RNAs - although the basis for this discovery between the groups was very different. Szostak was interested in this evolutionary process to better understand how RNAs could have evolved on their own in the genesis of life in the universe.
Jack Szostak continues to research the origins and evolution at the molecular level.
He is Professor of Genetics and Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard Medical School and Alexander Rich Distinguished Investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston.
GGerald
Gerald Joyce researches Darwinian evolution of RNA and DNA. Like Jack Szostak, he also is interested in this evolution of nucleic acid to understand early life on Earth.
He developed SELEX simultaneously alongside Gold and Tuerk, and Szostak and Ellington.
Joyce is a Professor in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at the California campus of the Scripps Institute, located in La Jolla, California.
Gerald Joyce, M.D., Ph.D.
Page Contents
• Larry Gold
• Craig Tuerk
• Jack Szostak
• Andrew Ellington
• Gerald Joyce