On June 28, Doosan Group’s Yonkang Foundation (Y.H. Park, Chairman) presented the prize for the thesis for medicine category at the awards ceremony of the Yonkang Academic Awards 2010, which was held at the Press Center in Taepyeong-ro, Jung-gu, Seoul.

A plaque and US$ 16,000 in prize money were presented to Prof. An Seong-min, Associate Professor of Translational Medicine at the Gil Hospital of Gacheon University of Medicine and Science.

The award-winning paper was published under the title “The first Korean genome sequence and analysis: Full genome sequencing for a socio-ethnic group” in the September 2009 issue of Genome Research. By analyzing the genomes of ethnic Koreans using a next-generation sequence method for the first time, the study demonstrated that customized medicine based on genomics can be achieved using Korea’s homegrown technology.

Chairman Y.H. Park said, “Medicine is a critical factor in the healthy and prosperous life of human beings,” adding, “I hope that the Yonkang Academic Awards contribute in a modest way to the development of medicine in Korea.”

The prize for the medicine thesis category of the Yonkang Academic Awards has been awarded since 2006 by the Yonkang Foundation, Doosan Group’s charity foundation for scholarship and academic research, with a view to expediting the development of medicine in Korea and to stimulating young medical scientists’ desire to conduct research.