Three Americans win Nobel Prize in medicine for work on traffic control system of cells
By Ariana Eunjung Cha, Updated: Monday, October 7, 1:59 PM E-mail the writer
Three American researchers won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for their insights into the traffic control system for living cells — discoveries that the awards committee hoped would lead to future treatments for epilepsy, diabetes and immunological disorders.
The three winners who will share the $1.2 million prize are: James Rothman, 62, a cell biologist from Yale University; Randy Schekman, 64, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley; and Thomas Südhof, 57, a Stanford University neuroscience researcher.
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Three researchers from U.S. schools have won the Nobel Prize in medicine. James Rothman and Randy Schekman share the award with Thomas Suedhof.
In announcing the awards, The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm said the men "solved the mystery" of how cells organize their transport systems with timing and precision.
The researchers' work, which was done separately (although Rothman and Schekman collaborated at one point early in their careers), revolves around tiny bubble-like structures called vesicles that act as cargo carriers. They showed that these bubbles act in a similar way in organisms as different as yeast and man.
While the honorees expressed gratitude for the prize, their comments about their work were tinged with worry about the future of biomedical research amid years of cuts in federal funding.
Schekman, whose first major grant was from the National Institutes of Health in 1978, said winning the Nobel Prize had made him reflect about how his original proposal might have fared in today's depressed funding climate. "It would have been much, much more difficult to get support," he said. "There is an enormous pressure to do practical things at the expense of basic science."
Likewise Rothman said things are "much, much more difficult — quantitatively more difficult — for a young scientist to get started today."
"Would I have been able to have the initiative, to take the risk?" he wondered at a news conference at Yale. "I really am very concerned I would not have been."
Südhof also said of the funding situation in Washington: "It worries me tremendously."
"I do think there's a danger that we in some way the system will stop and we won't progress at the rate that would benefit our nation," he said.
'This is it!'
Schekman's work began in the 1970s with yeast, a single-cell microorganism often used as a model for more complex life forms. While investigating how vesicles move in and out of cells, he was able to identify 50 different genes involved in the process.
Schekman, who is also an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, said that while he had known his work was being considered for the prize, he was still shocked when the call came while he was sleeping. His wife picked up the phone and yelled to him that "This is it!"
Nobel Prize-winning discoveries often don't have any practical applications for 20 to 30 years after the awards are given out, but in Schekman's case they have already had a major impact on the biotech industry.
Understanding this molecular machinery of cell transport allowed Novo-Nordisk to tinker with baker's yeast to make it produce insulin. And it helped lay the foundation for the development of Genentech's cancer therapeutic Herceptin.
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Comments
I listened to Rothman's press conference, which was live-streamed on the Yale website. He said he had essentially no results for about 5 years. With current funding of applications at below 20% of those approved, it is likely that Rothman would not have had support to continue his work after 3 years.
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