GE Award

GE Award in Affinity Technology

The 2019 GE Award in Affinity Technology is presented to

Prof. Ingemar Lundström

Linköping University, Sweden

In the early 1980’s Prof. Lundström and colleagues at Linköping University, Sweden, pioneered investigations using surface plasmon resonance (SPR) principles for immunosensing. The work was picked up by Pharmacia (Pharmacia Biosensor) and later led to the launch of the BIAcore family of biosensors, now used worldwide, and later followed by SPR instruments from many other companies.

The technology was a paradigm shift, allowing scientist to monitor, visualize and characterize affinity interactions in real-time. In addition, the instruments developed used microfluidics technology not seen before in the field of life science. The methodology allowed the measuring of overall affinity constants with separate on-rate and off-rate constants. The interactions could be determined using unlabeled samples, which has contributed significantly to the understanding of affinity interactions.

For his work in the physical principles of the underlying SPR phenomenon and the insights and first demonstrations of how this could be used for immunosensing, Ingemar Lundström is awarded the GE Affinity Technology Award 2019.

The International Society for Molecular Recognition (ISMR) administers the international and highly-prestigious Award in Affinity Technology, which is awarded at each biennial ISMR Affinity Conference. This year it is generously sponsored by GE Healthcare.

Recipients since the inception of the award are: Klaus Mosbach (1985), Meir Wilchek (1987), Chris Lowe (1989), Irwin Chaiken (1991), Jerker Porath (1993), Mathias Uhlen/Fred Regnier (1995), Ken-ichi Kasai (1997), Mookambeswaran (Viji) Vijayalakshmi (1999), Stellan Hjertén (2001), Bertrand Seraphin (2005), Herbert P. Jennissen (2007), Ruedi Aebersold (2009), Alois Jungbauer (2011), Sophia Hober (2013), Richard Willson (2015), Sten Ohlson (2017)