Three Americans have won the 2009 Nobel Prize in medicine for a discovery that has been likened to the tip of a shoelace, and may be key to conquering cancer, aging, aplastic anemia, obesity and other human woes.
Elizabeth Blackburn, of the University of California, San Francisco; Carol Greider, of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; and Jack W. Szostak, of Harvard Medical School and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; will share the honor and its $1.42 million purse. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences made the announcement this morning.
At the center of their joint research are telomeres, which Blackburn once described in The New York Times as “the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes in cells. Chromosomes carry the genetic information. Telomeres are buffers. They are like the tips of shoelaces. If you lose the tips, the ends start fraying.”
Blackburn and Szostak found a DNA sequence in telomeres that protects chromosomes from this fraying. Greider, while working for Blackburn as a graduate student, shared the discovery of an enzyme called telomerase, which creates DNA and rebuilds the frayed tips.
The discovery of this enzyme has helped scientists understand how cancer cells divide and grow, giving them seemingly infinite life. Unlike normal cells, which divide much less often and so don’t need much telomerase for repair or protection, cancer cells use a lot of it – leading Blackburn to say they are “addicted” to the enzyme. Researchers are now trying to find a vaccine to eliminate the enzyme in cancer and kill it.
Telomerase has also been found in stem cells and their “rejuvenation,” which promises treatment and cures for an as yet unknown number of diseases and injuries. It was stem cell research and her support of it that put Blackburn in the middle of a controversy during the Bush administration.
As a 2001 appointee to George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics, Blackburn disagreed with the administration on embryonic stem cell research, which was opposed to it for religious and political reasons. Although she was not told why, she was fired at the end of her first term. Blackburn was one of only two council members who weren’t reappointed, and her firing touched off heated criticism by the scientific community and the media.
Their winning of the Nobel Prize made Blackburn and Greider the first two women to share the award for medicine in the same year. After learning that she had won, Greider likened the news to an old comedy bit.
“It’s something you can’t expect,” she told the Associated Press. “It’s like the Monty Python sketch, ‘Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!’”
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