Cancer cell researchers share Nobel prize for medicine
STOCKHOLM, Oct 8: Cancer cell pioneers Leland Hartwell of the United States and Britons Tim Hunt and Paul Nurse won the 2001 Nobel Prize for medicine on Monday.
They share the prestigious $1 million award for groundbreaking research that could help find a cure for cancer, still one of the biggest killers in the developed world, Sweden’s Karolinska Institute said in a statement.
The three scientists used different approaches to pinpoint the mechanisms how the 100,000 billion cells that make up each human constantly divide and duplicate its chromosomes into two daughter cells.
Cancer develops when the mechanism breaks down and cells divide uncontrollably forming tumours, some of which are deadly.
Hartwell, Hunt and Nurse made breakthroughs in understanding how cells control their division, a stepping stone to finding out why some go haywire.
“This is the basic information on how cells divide — vital information for future treatment of most sorts of cancer,” Karolinska Institute professor and cancer expert Ulrik Ringborg told a news conference in Stockholm.
“It has contributed to the understanding of the problem so you can pose the questions that will lead to better understanding and treatments,” Nurse, director general of Britain’s Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF), told a separate hastily called news conference in London.
EYE ON MOTORBIKE: “It’s all a bit of a shock,” said Nurse, who, while surprised at winning, was quick to find use for the money from the award which is officially called the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
“I know it’s the male menopause — but I do have my eye on a motorbike,” he said.
Hartwell works at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Hunt, born in 1943, and Nurse, born in 1949, built on Hartwell’s findings in their work at the ICRF.
Hunt and Nurse are the first British winners of the medicine prize since James Black in 1988.
Nurse, using yeast cells, one of the simplest organisms to study, identified a gene that controls the division of cells and then found a human gene containing instructions to make a protein called CDK, a building block for cell division.
“It meant everything in between was controlled in the same way. That was a eureka moment,” said Nurse.
CELL DIVISION: Hunt worked on special molecules that function like an engine for cell division. He discovered cyclins, proteins that regulate the function of CDK, while studying sea urchins eggs.
“It turned out that cyclin was the activating subunit. The thing that Paul (Nurse) had discovered just didn’t work by itself. It needed this other protein to cosy up to it in order to turn it on,” said Hunt, a biochemist.
Hunt, who plans to spend his prize paying off his mortgage, said he and Nurse “did not really believe” they had won until they saw it on the Nobel web site.
Their findings complemented work by microbiologist Hartwell who found a class of genes vital in the first step of each cell cycle.
Hartwell, a father of three and grandfather of five, also introduced a concept called “checkpoint”, which is a valuable aid to understanding cell division.
“I used to think Nobel laureates were brilliant people. I think my contributions have been pretty simple,” Hartwell said in an interview.
“I’m feeling a little dazed,” the 61-year-old added. “It’s hard to be too celebratory with things going on in Afghanistan but I’m certainly very pleased.” —Reuters
STOCKHOLM, Oct 8: Cancer cell pioneers Leland Hartwell of the United States and Britons Tim Hunt and Paul Nurse won the 2001 Nobel Prize for medicine on Monday.
