The European Patent Office and the European Commission held the European Inventors of the Year 2006 earlier this month in Brussels. Among the awardees in the field of Biotechnology are:

• Zbigniew Janowicz and Cornelis Hollenberg, who invented a method for making proteins in Hansenula yeast, which is used to produce an affordable vaccine against Hepatitis B
• Stephen P.A. Fodor, Michael C. Pirrung, J. Leighton Read and Lubert Stryer for their invention of the DNA chip or microarray technology, the basis on which the biotech company, Affymetrix, was founded
• John Starrett, Joanne Bronson, John Martin, Muzammil Mansuri and David Tortolani, whose work resulted in a breakthrough with chemical compouonds, called prodrugs of phosphonates, and
• Larry Gold and Craig Tuerk, who found out that nucleic acids can bind a protein to potentially intercept other proteins that cause diseases like AMD.

EU Commissioner Verheugen expressed his hope that one day "the European Inventor of the Year will have the same prestige as the Nobel Prize". IF you're interested to see the other nominees in various categories, click here.