EXCERPT

> Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna have become world renowned for their discoveries and development involving CRISPR/Cas9, a gene-editing technology that has been called "one of the most important genetic inventions of our time".
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> In 2014, the duo received the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. The following year, Charpentier and Doudna were also co-awarded the €50,000 Princess of Asturias Award of Technical and Scientific Research – commonly referred to as the "Spanish Nobel Prize". The pair also garnered a nomination for the actual Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
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> Meanwhile, on April 15, 2014, another genetic researcher, Feng Zhang, was awarded something potentially much more valuable than the Nobel Prize: a patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for the very same thing for which Charpentier and Doudna have received so many accolades: using CRISPR/Cas9 to edit genes.

Source: http://www.bio-itworld.com/2017/1/9/interference-a-crispr-patent-dispute-roadmap.aspx