Grifols recently announced the 2012 winners of the Martín Villar Research Awards on Hemostasis. Established in 2007, the international awards recognize the work of scientists and researchers who conduct their investigations in the field of blood coagulation disorders. The awards were named for Dr. José Martín Villar, a hematologist and surgeon from Valencia, Spain, whose career focused on advancing knowledge on hematology. Villar, who passed away this year, pioneered the treatment of hemophilia in Spain.

 

The first prize, totaling €25,000 ($32,333 USD) was awarded to Lacramioara Ivanciu, PhD, of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, for her contribution to the development of an innovative protein engineering strategy to prevent bleeding in hemophilic mice. Ivanciu is a 2010-2012 recipient of the National Hemophilia Foundation’s Judith Graham Pool Postdoctoral Research Fellowship.

 

The second prize, of €10,000 ($12,936 USD) went to Rezan A. Kadir, MD, of the Royal Free Hospital of London, UK, for the development of a noninvasive prenatal diagnostic screening, tested in mice, that analyzes maternal plasma DNA in women carrying specific hemophilia gene mutations who are pregnant with male fetuses. This new technique can determine whether the fetus has inherited a causative mutation for hemophilia from its mother. The third prize, totaling €5,000 ($6,469 USD), was awarded to Katherine A. High, MD, of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, for her research into a reverse-engineered genetic method using zinc finger nucleases. These enzymes are engineered to accurately identify the mutant gene in mice with hemophilia A.

 

Source: Grifols news release dated November 7, 2012