The 2023 International Award will be presented to Dr Antonina Roll-Mecak. Antonina is currently the Senior Investigator and Chief of the Unit of Cell Biology and Biophysics at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and holds a joint appointment in the Biochemistry and Biophysics Center at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health in the U.S.A. After completing her Ph.D. at Rockefeller University in structural biology of the protein synthesis machinery, she shifted gears and pursued mechanistic cell biology studies of microtubule cytoskeletal regulators as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco. In 2010, she became an independent group leader at the National Institutes of Health where she started an interdisciplinary program focused on understanding how the genetic (isoform variation) and chemical diversity (posttranslational modifications) of tubulin regulates the dynamics and mechanical properties of microtubules and constitutes a code, a “tubulin code” that is interpreted by microtubule-based motors and associated proteins.

Antonina said: “I am thrilled to receive the International Award from the Biochemical Society. This award is a recognition of the wonderful work people in my lab have done throughout the years and spotlights the beauty and importance of the tubulin code which has emerged as an exciting frontier in microtubule biology. I thank Dr. Nico Tjandra for nominating me and for being a steadfast supporter since I arrived at the NIH. I am especially thrilled that my nomination was supported by Dr. Eva Nogales and Dr. Cynthia Wolberger, two amazing scientists who I have admired since I was a graduate student.”

The 2020 International Award was presented to Associate Professor Wai-Hong Tham of the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Australia. 

Wai-Hong’s research explores the mechanisms regulating successful infection of malaria parasites within the human host. Her team has identified human red blood cell proteins that serve as entry portals for malaria parasites. By providing an accurate molecular, biochemical and structural understanding of how malaria parasites infect red blood cells, her contributions provide insights into the rational design of novel inhibitors and vaccine targets against malaria. She has also identified parasite proteins that bind to human immune regulators to subvert the human immune system for parasite survival. Her group discovered the important role that parasite surface proteins play in immune evasion strategies; the discovery of structural scaffolds that unite the red blood cell binding domains of parasite adhesins and the identification of a new invasion pathway for Plasmodium vivax. These breakthrough discoveries significantly advanced understanding of the complex interplay between malaria parasites and the human host, and have led to the development of novel therapeutics against malaria. 

Wai-Hong said: “I am absolutely delighted and humbled to be receiving this award. This award is a wonderful recognition of our research which would not have been possible without amazing collaborators, postdocs and research students and I am deeply grateful for their support. A significant part of this research has been carried out at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne Australia, which always provide such an enriching scientific environment and a gaggle of supportive colleagues”.

Wai-Hong Tham presented her Award lecture on Wednesday 21 August 2019 at the ‘27th FAOBMB & 44th MSBMB Conference’ in Malaysia.  

The inaugural International Award was awarded in 2018 to Job Dekker from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Job introduced the concept that matrices of chromatin contact frequencies can be used to determine the three-dimensional structure of chromosomes.  Following this, Job invented the chromosome conformation capture (3C) technology to obtain such matrices and solved the first structure of a yeast chromosome in 2002.

Since then, his group has pioneered development and application of a series of molecular, genomic and computational approaches, such as 5C and Hi-C to map and analyze the three-dimensional folding of genomes at Kb resolution.  His work had led to new insights into the internal organization of chromatin fibres, the formation of chromatin looping interactions involved in long-range gene regulation, the organization of the interphase nucleus, the structure of metaphase chromosomes, and the general folding principles of complete genomes.  Recently his group has started to use 3D genome folding data for de novo genome assembly.

Of winning the International Award, Job said: “I am truly delighted to have been selected for the International Award.  This really honours the work of all my team members, collaborators, and colleagues that is starting to reveal how our genomes are folded.” 

Job presented his award lecture at the 24th IUBMB Congress Seoul, Korea on 4-8 June 2018.