17th ISTT prize to be awarded to Prof. Bill Skarnes

The ISTT Prize is awarded to investigators who have made outstanding contributions to the field of transgenic technologies. The selection of Prof. Bill Skarnes as the 17th ISTT Prize winner was made by the ISTT Prize Committee, recognizing his exceptional contribution to the field of animal transgenesis. Over more than three decades, Professor Skarnes has made major contributions to mouse genetics, particularly through the development of large-scale approaches for targeted mutagenesis in mouse embryonic stem cells. His early work on promoter-trap and polyA-trap strategies provided some of the first systematic methods for generating insertional mutations in the mouse genome and helped establish principles that underpin modern genome-wide mutagenesis efforts.

A significant part of Prof. Skarnes’ career has been devoted to the conception and implementation of the International Knockout Mouse Consortium (IKMC). As a founding architect of the EUCOMM and KOMP initiatives, he helped establish high-throughput pipelines for the production of targeted mutations in mouse embryonic stem cells, supporting the goal of generating alleles for every protein-coding gene in the mouse genome. His laboratory developed the widely adopted “knockout-first” allele design, which integrates reporter, null, and conditional functionalities within a single allele and enabled efficient, scalable, and standardised allele production across multiple centres.

Through these initiatives, Prof. Skarnes’ group generated and validated thousands of high-quality, conditional-ready alleles using rigorous quality control pipelines. These resources have been distributed globally and continue to support research into gene function, development, physiology, and disease modelling. In addition to his work on large-scale mutagenesis, Prof. Skarnes has remained actively engaged in advancing genome engineering technologies, including the application of CRISPR-based approaches in both mouse and human systems.

We very much look forward to welcoming Prof. Skarnes to TT2026, where he will deliver the ISTT Prize Lecture during the prize award ceremony.

Bill Skarnes Laboratory web site