Andrew Porter - 17th August 1955 to 30th August 2023
During the BSGCT's 2024 Conference, the society's president Rafael J. Yáñez-Muñoz led tribute to long-standing BSGCT member Dr Andy Porter who passed away last year after a short illness.
Having worked together for over six years, Professor Yáñez-Muñoz described Dr Porter as a kind and patient man, dedicated to his work, students and family, and remembered the support he gave him when he himself came over to work from Spain.
Andy's interests resided specifically with DNA replication, repair and expression; in particular genetic engineering, the cell cycle and topoisomerases. After reading groundbreaking papers by the Mario Capecchi and Oliver Smithies groups on gene targeting - known today as genome editing - his interest piqued. Only three years after this, Andy, working with human cells, started publishing a set of seminal papers demonstrating the generation of double knockouts, targeted breakage of chromosomes and placing an endogenous gene under inducible regulation. He also led discussions on the prospects of therapeutic genome editing 25 years before the approval of Casgevy in 2023. Heartbreakingly, Casgevy received marketing authorisation just months after he passed away.
See the BSGCT's president's full tribute during the 2024 Conference below or click here.
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