Two women in US trio to share Nobel Prize for medicine

AMERICANS Elizabeth H Blackburn, Carol W Greider and Jack W Szostak won the 2009 Nobel Prize in medicine yesterday for discovering a key mechanism in the genetic operations of cells, an insight that hasinspired new lines ofresearch into cancer.

It was the first time two women have been honoured at the same time.

The trio solved the mystery of how chromosomes, the rod-like structures that carry DNA, protect themselves from degrading when cells divide.

The Nobel citation said the laureates found the solution in the ends of the chromosomes, features called telomeres that are often compared to the plastic tips at the end of shoe laces that keep laces from unravelling.

Blackburn and Greider discovered the enzyme that builds telomeres – telomerase – and the mechanism by which it adds DNA to the tips of chromosomes to replace genetic material that has eroded away.

The prize-winners’ work, done in the late 1970s and 1980s, set the stage forresearch suggesting that cancer cells use telomerase to sustain their uncontrolled growth. Scientists are studying whether drugs that block the enzyme can fight the disease. In addition, scientists believe that the DNA erosion the enzyme repairs might play a role in some illnesses.

“The discoveries by Blackburn, Greider and Szostak have added a new dimension to our understanding of the cell, shed light on disease mechanisms, and stimulated the development of potential new therapies,” the prize committee said in its citation.

Blackburn, who holds US and Australian citizenship, is a professor of biology and physiology at the University of California, San Francisco. Greider is a professor in the department of molecular biology and genetics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Greider, 48, said she was telephoned just before 5am with the news she had won.

“It’s really very thrilling, it’s something you can’t expect,” she said.

Greider described there search as beginning with experiments aimed atunderstanding how cells work, not with the idea for certain implications for medicine.

“Funding for that kind of curiosity-driven science is really important,” she said, adding disease-oriented research isn’t the only way to reach the answer, but “both together are synergistic,” she said.

London-born Szostak, 56, has been at Harvard Medical School since 1979 and is professor of genetics.

The award includes a10 million kronor (€970,000) purse split three ways among the winners, a diploma and an invitation to prize ceremonies in Stockholm on December 10.

Only ten women have won the prestigious medicine award since the first Nobel Prizes were handed out in 1901. Judges say that is because research often dates back several decades to when science was dominated by men.