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| Dr. Yemi Adesokan |
The 34 years old Adesokan, made the list of TR35 by creating
an innovative way of using what experts tagged DNA sequencing technology for
medical tests.
Adesokan, whose company Pathogenica Incorporated disclosed
this through the Business Development Manager, Mr. Daniel Jackson at the
weekend in a press statement made available to ITRealms Online.
He would be recognized by the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) Technology Review’s TR35 listing of the world’s top young
innovators for 2011 at a three-day conference scheduled for Cambridge, United
States this week, which ends today, October 19, 2011.
The annual selection of global top innovators under the age
of 35 began in 1999 by the editors of Technology Review to honor the young
innovators whose inventions and research were found most exciting.
ITRealms Online gathered that today that collection of TR35
consist of technologists and scientists, all under the age of 35; spanning
medicine, computing, communications, electronics, nanotechnology, among others,
with past recipients including Danah Boyd, Microsoft (2010); Sergey Brin, Google (2002); Helen Grenier,
IS Robotics (1999); Jonathan Ive, Apple Computer (1999); Mark Zuckerberg,
Facebook (2007).
Adesokan got his honour for the work in the application of
next generation sequencing to clinical diagnostics and was selected as a member
of the TR35 class of 2011 by a panel of expert judges and the editorial staff
of Technology Review, who evaluated more than 300 nominations.
He would join other TR35 honorees in discussing their
achievements at the emtech MIT 2011 conference, taking place at the MIT Media
Lab.
According to editor-in-chief and publisher of Technology
Review, Jason Pontin, technology innovation is key to driving growth and
progress in the areas of research, medicine, business and economics.
“This year’s group of TR35 recipients is driving the next
wave of transformative technology and making an impact on the way we live, work
and interact. We look forward to profiling and working with these technology
leaders each year, and watching their continued advancement in their respective
fields,” Pontin said.
Adesokan founded Pathogenica with genomics pioneer and
Harvard professor George Church in 2009 in order to commercialize applications
of pathogen sequencing.
Pathogenica’s test kits are able to identify the presence of
many pathogen variants within a complex sample by reading their nucleic acid
sequence, allowing for physicians to screen for multiple diseases with accurate
results and a rapid turnaround.
Responding, Prof. Church said sequencing technologies have
improved million-fold in the past seven years, bringing scientists a wealth of
individual genomics solutions.
“The key now is to employ the data to improve clinical
practice,” Church said, noting that the goals of the Personal Genome Project,
BioweatherMap - a research project founded with Adesokan, and various pathogen
genome sequencing efforts globally, have been to improve human welfare.
He pointed out that Pathogenica’s next generation sequencing
tests are among the first tests that will leverage these to bring clear benefit
to patients in the clinic, putting new tools for diagnosing and understanding
diseases in the hands of front line physicians.
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