British DNA expert tipped for Nobel medicine prize

A British researcher who discovered genetic fingerprinting that has helped solve crimes and settle paternity disputes is among potential candidates for the Nobel Prize in medicine, the first of six prestigious awards to be announced today by the Nobel committees.

Alec Jeffreys of the University of Leicester is often mentioned by experts as a possible candidate. He found in 1984 that a DNA sample could be linked to the person it came from – a finding that has come into play in court cases in which DNA evidence has exonerated convicted murderers.

It has also been used to help identify the victims of mass disasters, such as the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in New York and Washington.

Another possible winner of the £750,000 (€1m) medicine prize are US scientists who discovered an enzyme that broke new ground in research on cancer and ageing

The secretive Nobel committee at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute will announce the winner after a final vote this morning, but will not even say who is on the shortlist before then.

“We have been working on this since February,” said Hans Jornvall, secretary of the Nobel committee that reviews research nominated for the award.

Last year, the Nobel Prize in medicine went to Americans Andrew Fire and Craig Mello for discovering RNA interference, a process that can silence specific genes.

American researchers Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak have figured prominently in Nobel speculation in recent years for predicting and discovering an enzyme called telomerase.

Their work set the stage for research 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 age-related illnesses.

Karin Bojs, science editor at the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter – who correctly guessed two of last year’s Nobel Prizes – predicted that the medicine award would go to American David Julius and Israeli Baruch Minke for research on how the human body reacted to heat and pain.

Thomson Scientific, a unit of the US-based Thomson Corporation, singled out five possible candidates, including neuroscientist Fred Gage, who discovered that humans can develop new brain cells as adults.

Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in his will in the categories of medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace. The economics prize is technically not a Nobel but a 1968 creation of Sweden’s central bank.

The prizes are handed out every year on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896.

Nobel left few instructions on how to select winners, only that the prizes should honour those who “shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind”.

Jornvall said medicine winners must have made an important discovery – they are not awarded for a body of research.

“If it’s not possible to define what the discovery is, then it’s going to be hard,” he said.