Berkeley’s Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier of Germany’s Max Planck Institute have been awarded the 2017 Japan Prize for their invention of the revolutionary gene-editing technology known as CRISPR-Cas9, which has swept into research labs around the world and is already yielding new therapies for cancer and hereditary diseases.

Doudna and Charpentier each will receive a certificate of recognition, a commemorative gold medal and 50 million Japanese yen (approximately $420,000). The honors were presented at an award ceremony on April 19 in Tokyo.