The 1991 Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research has been bestowed, by unanimous decision of the Jury, upon Doctor Francisco Bolívar Zapata, of the Centre for Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), for his contributions to molecular biology and biotechnology at an international level. He is one of the most outstanding researchers in the development of techniques for the handling and characterisation of the genetic material in cells.
Dr. Bolívar has made a major contribution to the design, construction and characterisation of molecular vehicles for the cloning and expression of DNA. In fact, this Mexican researcher took part in the pioneering experiments in genetic engineering, as part of the team of researchers who, in 1979 in California, founded and organised the first genetic engineering company, Genentech, of which he is currently an advisor. This company, based in San Francisco, is known for the production of bacteria of the human hormones, insulin and somatostatin, related to the growth hormone.
Dr. Francsico Bolívar has received a number of prizes and honours in Mexico and abroad, and has been a member of various UNESCO, UNIDO and WHO specialist committees. The relevance and repercussions of his research work, which has allowed him to publish nearly one hundred articles and books, may be gauged by the thousands of bibliographic references in world scientific literature.
Specifically, one of them is one of the hundred most widely-quoted articles in the bibliography of all areas of human knowledge. His results and studies have been included or mentioned in more than 70 books, many of them text- books, several written by Nobel Prize-winners and by recognised specialists. Lastly, his contribution to the training of human resources has been enormous, as many of his associates form part of the academic staff of a good number of Latin-American universities, as well as the biotechnology industry.
Dr. Bolívar has worked in Mexico since 1977 and currently directs the Cuernacava Centre for Molecular Biology, subsidiary of the UNAM, with over 50 researchers and the same number of specialist technicians, which is, without a doubt, one of the model institutions in its field world- wide.
According to Dr. Bolívar, "we are really going through a revolution in biology. The last ten years have seen the appearance of a set of methodologies which go under the name genetic engineering.