Taipei, Aug. 30 (CNA) Taiwan's Tang Prize Foundation announced Wednesday that it had formed a partnership with International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB) in promoting the advancement of biopharmaceutical science Education.
The foundation signed a 9-year partnership project agreement with IUBMB in 2016 which is currently on the move, according to a statement issued by the organization.
Chern Jenn-chuan, chief executive of the foundation, said in the statement that IUBMB plays a significant role in uniting researchers and scientists in the fields of biochemistry and molecular biology from 77 countries.
The cooperation project with IUBMB marked another step forward by the foundation in promoting the biopharmaceutical science education after it signed a memorandum of cooperation that established a 10-year partnership with the Experimental Biology (EB) in 2015, the statement said.
The EB, an annual gathering of professional research scientists, is sponsored by six societies: American Association of Anatomists (AAA), the American Physiological Society (APS), American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), American Society for Investigative Pathology (ASIP), American Society for Nutrition (ASN), and American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET).
Furthermore, the Tang Prize Foundation will support outstanding young scientists to attend the "New Horizons in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education" conference which will be held Sept. 6-8 in Israel, it said.
The conference will be coorganized by the Weizmann Institute of Science (WIS) of Israel, IUBMB and the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS), the statement said.
Taiwanese chemist Andrew Wang, president-elect of IUBMB who serves as the distinguished visiting chair of the Institute of Biological Chemistry at Academia Sinica, Taiwan's top academic research institution, will also attend the conference which is aimed at providing a think tank setting that can bring inspiration to the teaching of biochemistry and molecular biology, it added.
The conference will be followed by the FEBS 2017 congress which will take place Sept. 10-14 in Jerusalem, the foundation said.
Feng Zhang, one of the 2016 Tang Prize winners in Biopharmaceutical Science, is to host a Tang Prize/IUBMB lecture in the conference on Sept. 12 on the topic "From Microbial Immunity to Genome Editing."
Zhang shared the Tang Prize with Emmanuelle Charpentier of France and Jennifer Doudna of the United States for the development of CRISPR/Cas9 as a breakthrough genome editing platform that promises to revolutionize biochemical research and disease treatment.
The cooperation between the Tang Prize and the world's top research organizations not only promotes awareness of the Prize in biopharmaceutical ccience but also encourages education and technology exchange in the Prize's four fields.
The Tang Prize awards were established by Taiwanese entrepreneur Samuel Yin (尹衍樑) in 2012 to honor people who have made significant contributions in the fields of sustainable development, biopharmaceutical science, sinology and rule of law. They are dubbed as the "Asian Nobel Prize."
