Rosalind Franklin Society Award bestowed to LIH researcher

• Integrated Biobank of Luxembourg (IBBL)

In July 2023, Kathleen Mommaerts, Researcher in the Biospecimen Science Research group at the Integrated Biobank of Luxembourg (IBBL), was awarded the Rosalind Franklin Society Award in Science for her article on induced pluripotent stem cells, which was published in the journal “Biopreservation and Biobanking” in February 2022.

The prestigious annual Award in Science was recently launched by the publisher Mary Ann Liebert Inc., in partnership with the Rosalind Franklin Society, to reward the best paper of the year by a woman or underrepresented minority in science, in each of the publisher’s 100 peer-reviewed journals in science, medicine and biotechnology.

The award was granted to Dr. Mommaerts in July – which coincides with the late Rosalind Franklin’s birthday – for her article “Method Optimization of Skin Biopsy-Derived Fibroblast Culture for Reprogramming Into Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells”. The study presented a method for the processing of skin biopsies, and specifically for the isolation, culture and cryopreservation of skin-derived fibroblasts, which can subsequently be reprogrammed into induced pluripotent stem cells.

It was such a wonderful surprise to have been awarded this prestigious award. I am extremely grateful to the selection committee for selecting our paper, which is an excellent example of a collaborative project involving the key Luxembourg research institutes working on this topic. I am also grateful to my colleagues for providing their support and expertise

says Dr. Mommaerts.

The full study, carried out by Dr. Mommaerts in collaboration with Camille Bellora (IBBL), Pauline Lambert (IBBL), Seval Türkmen (Laboratoire National de Santé), Jens Schwamborn (Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine) and Fay Betsou (Institut Pasteur), can be accessed here.