- Title: NOBEL-PRIZE/CHEMISTRY DNA research deployed in war on cancer scoops Nobel prize
- Date: 8th October 2015
- Summary: VIEW OF SCREEN SHOWING GRAPH THE SECOND DNA REPAIR WORKED ON
- Embargoed: 23rd October 2015 13:00
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- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVA5C74MQAGSW8LZBBUXL73RRHWN
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Three scientists from Sweden, the United States and Turkey won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Chemistry on Wednesday (October 7) for working out how cells repair damaged DNA, providing new ammunition in the war on cancer.
Aziz Sancar told Reuters that he has been working on this for some 40 years, spending countless hours on research on this topic back when he was a graduate student.
"I have worked on this question for nearly forty years and when I was a grad student I worked 18-20 hours a day and over the years, that has gone down some, but I still put 12 hours a day," Sancar said.
Detailed understanding of DNA damage has helped drive a revolution in cancer treatment as researchers develop new drugs that target specific molecular pathways used by tumor cells to proliferate.
Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar won the prize for "mechanistic studies of DNA repair." Their work mapped how cells repair deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) to prevent damaging errors from appearing in genetic information. In many forms of cancer, one of more of these repair systems is broken.
"My research has significant medical implications, therefore I was expecting it to be in medicine and therefore I was not expecting it to be in chemistry. But my work as the interface of biochemistry and medicine and therefore it was justified to give it in chemistry, but after learning the medicine award was given two days ago, I was not expecting a nobel this year, it was a surprise," Sancar said.
Thousands of alterations to a cell's genome occur every day due to spontaneous changes and damage by radiation, free radicals and carcinogens - yet DNA remains astonishingly intact.
To keep genetic materials from disintegrating, a range of molecular systems monitor and repair DNA, in processes that the three award-winning scientists helped map out.
"We developed a method were we can detect a DNA repair at single, nuclear type level, single unit of the whole genome and that differs from person to person and we believe that that information will be useful for the treat persons according to their DNA composition," Sancar, who has U.S. and Turkish citizenship and is a professor at the University of North Carolina, told Reuters.
In the early 1970s, DNA was viewed as a stable molecule but fellow Nobel winner Lindahl showed it actually decayed at a rate that ought make the development of life on Earth impossible, which in turn led him to uncover the counteracting repair process.
Sancar, meanwhile, worked out how cells repair ultra-violet damage and Modrich uncovered the mechanism for correcting errors during cell division.
The 8 million Swedish crowns ($969,000) chemistry prize is the third of this year's Nobels. Previous winners of the chemistry prize have included Ernest Rutherford, Marie Curie and Linus Pauling.
Sancar said he is thankful for his home country and the United States as he receives this great honor.
"I come from a humble beginning from a small town in Turkey and the Syrian border where there are all those problems. I must say that I am very grateful to my home country which has given me free and outstanding education that prepared me to come to this country and do important research to get the nobel prize," Sancar said.
The prize is named after dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel and has been awarded since 1901 for achievements in science, literature and peace in accordance with his will. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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