
Ralph L. Brinster
Wolf Prize Laureate in Medicine 2002/3

The Prize Committee for Medicine has unanimously decided that the 2002/3 Wolf Prize be jointly awarded to: Oliver Smithies, Mario R. Capecchi and Ralph L. Brinster.
Ralph L. Brinster
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
“for the development of procedures to manipulate mouse ova and embryos, which has enabled transgenesis and its applications in mice.”
Ralph L. Brinster has made seminal advances that have enabled the development of the field of transgenesis. He developed the egg culture system, essential for the generation of transgenic animals. He first showed that it was possible to colonize a mouse blastocyst with stem cells from older embryos. Moreover, he showed that teratocarcinoma cells could combine with blastocyst cells to form adult chimeric mice, demonstrating the feasibility of this approach to change the genetic character of mice. Brinster was also the first scientist to microinject fertilized eggs (with RNA) and was at the forefront of the field in applying these microinjection methods to generate transgenic mice.
