A British scientist who triggered a revolution in medical research and who was behind the "designer mouse", has been awarded the "US Nobel prize".

Martin Evans, of Cardiff University, and two American colleagues share the £35,000 Lasker award for 2001 for their pioneering work that ended in laboratory mice with cystic fibrosis, cancer and thousands of other human diseases.

The award is widely seen as a pointer to the Nobel prize; 63 Lasker winners have gained it.

Professor Evans, 60, is director of the school of biosciences at Cardiff, but was until recently at Cambridge. Mario Capecchi of the University of Utah, in Salt Lake City, and Oliver Smithies, now of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, made up the trio behind what is now the routine technique of gene targeting.

Using their technique, researchers can eliminate, alter or add genes to particular parts of a mammal chromosome and then study the alterations in the models - the "designer mice" or other laboratory animals. "It is a great recognition to be awarded a prize like this, quite out of the blue," Proffessor Evans said.

With a Cambridge colleague, he was the first to isolate the embryo stem cells that can in principle become any of 300 different types of cell in the mammalian body. These go anywhere, do anything, cells could lead to treatments for diseases thought intractable.