The 2020 GlaxoSmithKline Award was presented to Dr Sarah Teichmann of the Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK.

Sarah is Head of Cellular Genetics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute.  Her work focuses on deciphering the immune system with genomics and bioinformatics approaches. She co-chairs the international Human Cell Atlas Consortium together with Aviv Regev (Broad Institute). Sarah did her PhD at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK with Dr Cyrus Chothia, FRS and was a Beit Memorial Fellow at University College London with Professor Dame Janet Thornton, FMedSci, FRS. She started her group at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in 2001. In 2013, she moved to the Wellcome Genome Campus in Hinxton, Cambridge, jointly with the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute and the Sanger Institute. In 2016 she became Head of the Cellular Genetics Programme at the Sanger Institute. Sarah is also a Director of Research in the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge and Senior Research Fellow at Churchill College. Sarah is an EMBO member and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and her work has been recognized by a number of UK and international prizes, including the Biochemical Society Colworth Medal in 2011.

Sarah said: “I am deeply honoured to be awarded The GlaxoSmithKline Award for 2020 by the Biochemical Society, which recognises the work by my talented team and our collaborators. Together we have driven forwards the application of single cell genomics and computation to human tissues, providing new insights into the molecular and cellular details of development and disease.”

Sarah presented her Award lecture on Friday 26 June 2020 as part of the Biochemistry Focus webinar series. View the recording. 

The 2018 GlaxoSmithKline Award was awarded to Anne Bertolotti from the Laboratory of Molecular Biology of the Medical Research Council in Cambridge.  Anne has discovered major components of protein quality control systems in cells. These systems represent the cellular defence against misfolded proteins that accumulate in devastating diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or Huntington’s disease. 

Anne has made outstanding contributions to our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underpinning neurodegenerative diseases and discovered strategies to enhance protein quality control systems for possible treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. One of the strategies consists of selective inhibition of a phosphatase, an important discovery because phosphatases were thought to be undruggable. The discovery of selective phosphatase inhibitors from Anne’s lab represents a huge advance for basic and medical science with a transformative potential for a group of diseases for which no treatment exists so far.

Read Anne's article published in Biochemical Society Transactions - The split protein phosphatase system.

Of winning the GlaxoSmithKline Award, Anne said “The award came as a surprise, on an early morning whilst I was visiting a dear friend and colleague in San Francisco.  It is a great honour to join the list of distinguished awardees and a wonderful feeling to have our work recognized in this way. The work recognized by the award is the result of a team effort and my heart is with my lab members, past and present who have fearlessly joined me to explore the unexplored.”

Anne presented her award lecture at the Society conference ‘The Dynamic Cell III’ on 19-21 March 2018 at the Manchester Conference Centre.

The 2016 GlaxoSmithKline Award was presented to Charles Swanton, of Cancer Research UK’s London Research Institute, for his work on cancer heterogeneity which has had a huge impact in the field with far reaching and important implications to future approaches to cancer therapy.

Charles presented his GlaxoSmithKline award lecture on 17 November 2016 at Charles Darwin House, London, UK.

Read Charle's article published in Biochemical Society Transactions - Constraints in cancer evolution.