Nobel Prize in medicine to be announced in Sweden
Scientists who researched so-called “knockout mice”, DNA fingerprinting or stem cells are among the possible candidates for the Nobel Prize in medicine to be announced today in the Swedish capital.
The physiology or medicine prize to be presented by the Nobel committee at the Karolinska institute in Stockholm will kick off two weeks of award announcements ending with the Nobel Peace Prize on October 13.
The Nobel committees do not reveal who has been nominated for the awards, but that does not stop experts and Nobel-watchers from speculating on potential winners.
Names being bandied about for the medicine prize include Mario Capecchi, Martin Evans and Olivier Smithies for creating “knockout mice” – animals whose genetic code has been altered in the lab to either turn on or off certain genes that mice and humans share.
The research allows scientists to understand the purpose of those genes and their role in disease, as well as test therapeutic drugs.
Other candidates singled out by Thomson Scientific, a unit of the US-based Thomson Corporation, could be Pierre Chambon, Ronald Evans and Elwood Jensen, who opened up the field of studying proteins called nuclear hormone receptors. The receptors grab onto certain hormones and vitamins and migrate to the nucleus of a cell, where they regulate the activity of genes.
Chambon, Evans and Jensen shared the annual Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation awards for their research last year. Dozens of scientists who won Lasker awards went on to win the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.
This year’s Lasker award for basic research was shared by Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak for predicting and discovering an enzyme called telomerase.
Another former Lasker award winner figuring in this year’s Nobel speculation is Alec Jeffreys of the University of Leicester. He discovered in 1984 that individuals’ DNA differed in particular sites, where the chemical sequence that makes up the genetic code exhibited variable numbers of repeats.
That meant a DNA sample could be linked to the person it came from, as is now well known from court cases and identification of victims of mass disasters.
Afred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in his will in the categories of literature, peace, medicine, physics and chemistry. The economics prize is technically not a Nobel but a 1968 creation of Sweden’s central bank.
Winners receive a check of 10 million kronor (€1m), handshakes with Scandinavian royalty, and a banquet on December 10 – the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896. All prizes are handed out in Stockholm except for the peace prize, which is presented in Oslo.
Last year’s medicine prize went to Australians Barry Marshall and Robin Warren for discovering a bacteria that causes ulcers.
