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Nobel-Winning discovery spawned new industry
- Thread starter FluBossie
- Start date
AlaskaDenise
In Memoriam
Re: Nobel-Winning discovery spawned new industry
That link comes up with a blank page for me, however this is probably the same basic story:
Mon 2 Oct 2006
U.S. scientists win Nobel for medicine
By Sarah Edmonds and Patrick Lannin
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Americans Andrew Fire and Craig Mello won the 2006 Nobel Prize for medicine on Monday for their discovery of how to switch off genes, a potential road to new treatments for diseases from AIDS to blindness and cancer.
Fire, 47, and Mello, 45, are among the youngest in recent history to win the prize of 10 million Swedish crowns (726,000 pounds). Their work, which was published in 1998, received remarkably swift recognition.
Through experiments with worms, the two showed that a double strand of ribonucleic acid, or RNA, the genetic messenger of the cell, can "silence" targeted genes in a process known as RNA interference (RNAi).
RNAi has grown quickly into a hot area of research for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, who see it as a promising way of tackling a range of conditions.
"Craig's and my work (concerned) why some genes get turned off," Fire told Reuters.
"We were trying to manipulate them and we found certain things could turn them off very efficiently ... Knowing the genes doesn't tell you what they do, so if you start to turn them off you can start to learn what they do."
The discoveries may lead to methods to stop gene expression in diseases such as cancer, slowing tumour growth.
"The discovery is already being used in clinical trials for viral diseases, for eye diseases, for cardiovascular metabolic diseases," Bertil Fredholm, a member of the prize-giving Nobel Assembly of Stockholm's Karolinska Institute, told Reuters.
"But even more importantly, it is being used in every drug industry as a fundamental research tool," he added, saying RNAi has "invaded" laboratories worldwide.
Phillip Sharp of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Massachusetts, himself a 1993 Nobel prize winner, has used RNAi to kill HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
UNUSUALLY FAST
Nobel prizes are often granted to winning work decades later but Fredholm said the selection of Mello and Fire was due to the clear importance of their findings.
"Sometimes it is immediately apparent to the Nobel committee that a discovery is a really fundamental one," he said.
He cited 1962 Nobel Laureates James Watson and Francis Crick, who won their prize just nine years after discovering the structure of DNA, the fundamental building block of life.
Mello, who developed a fascination with the origins of life digging for dinosaur bones in the western United States with his paleontologist father, said he had suspected the work might win a prize but not for another 10 or 20 years.
"It's amazing. It just hasn't sunk in yet," he said from his Massachusetts home.
Fire told Reuters the call from Stockholm was a surprise.
"There are dreams and there are wrong numbers and both were more likely," he said in a telephone interview, adding that "the recognition is most appreciated."
Fire earned his Ph.D. in biology in 1983 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is now a professor of pathology and genetics at Stanford University School of Medicine. Mello has a Harvard doctorate and is a professor of molecular medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
The Massachusetts school said a number of firms -- Novartis AG, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Monsanto Co., GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer -- had licensed RNAi for their research.
Massachusetts-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. has used RNAi to block a gene involved in cholesterol metabolism, for example, and this week won a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to use the technology against H5N1 avian influenza.
.
That link comes up with a blank page for me, however this is probably the same basic story:
Mon 2 Oct 2006
U.S. scientists win Nobel for medicine
By Sarah Edmonds and Patrick Lannin
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Americans Andrew Fire and Craig Mello won the 2006 Nobel Prize for medicine on Monday for their discovery of how to switch off genes, a potential road to new treatments for diseases from AIDS to blindness and cancer.
Fire, 47, and Mello, 45, are among the youngest in recent history to win the prize of 10 million Swedish crowns (726,000 pounds). Their work, which was published in 1998, received remarkably swift recognition.
Through experiments with worms, the two showed that a double strand of ribonucleic acid, or RNA, the genetic messenger of the cell, can "silence" targeted genes in a process known as RNA interference (RNAi).
RNAi has grown quickly into a hot area of research for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, who see it as a promising way of tackling a range of conditions.
"Craig's and my work (concerned) why some genes get turned off," Fire told Reuters.
"We were trying to manipulate them and we found certain things could turn them off very efficiently ... Knowing the genes doesn't tell you what they do, so if you start to turn them off you can start to learn what they do."
The discoveries may lead to methods to stop gene expression in diseases such as cancer, slowing tumour growth.
"The discovery is already being used in clinical trials for viral diseases, for eye diseases, for cardiovascular metabolic diseases," Bertil Fredholm, a member of the prize-giving Nobel Assembly of Stockholm's Karolinska Institute, told Reuters.
"But even more importantly, it is being used in every drug industry as a fundamental research tool," he added, saying RNAi has "invaded" laboratories worldwide.
Phillip Sharp of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Massachusetts, himself a 1993 Nobel prize winner, has used RNAi to kill HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
UNUSUALLY FAST
Nobel prizes are often granted to winning work decades later but Fredholm said the selection of Mello and Fire was due to the clear importance of their findings.
"Sometimes it is immediately apparent to the Nobel committee that a discovery is a really fundamental one," he said.
He cited 1962 Nobel Laureates James Watson and Francis Crick, who won their prize just nine years after discovering the structure of DNA, the fundamental building block of life.
Mello, who developed a fascination with the origins of life digging for dinosaur bones in the western United States with his paleontologist father, said he had suspected the work might win a prize but not for another 10 or 20 years.
"It's amazing. It just hasn't sunk in yet," he said from his Massachusetts home.
Fire told Reuters the call from Stockholm was a surprise.
"There are dreams and there are wrong numbers and both were more likely," he said in a telephone interview, adding that "the recognition is most appreciated."
Fire earned his Ph.D. in biology in 1983 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is now a professor of pathology and genetics at Stanford University School of Medicine. Mello has a Harvard doctorate and is a professor of molecular medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
The Massachusetts school said a number of firms -- Novartis AG, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Monsanto Co., GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer -- had licensed RNAi for their research.
Massachusetts-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. has used RNAi to block a gene involved in cholesterol metabolism, for example, and this week won a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to use the technology against H5N1 avian influenza.
.
AlaskaDenise
In Memoriam
Re: Nobel-Winning discovery spawned new industry
it may also be due to the fact that I declare war on cookies - some sites don't work right without those little buggers.
it may also be due to the fact that I declare war on cookies - some sites don't work right without those little buggers.
FluBossie said:Yes, it is an other story but with the same context. Sorry for the inconvenience. I've a problem with copying the article and have to find out how to correct implement it in my message.
Re: Nobel-Winning discovery spawned new industry
Here I have the original text that belongs to the title of this story. Finally it worked.:smartass:
Mon Oct 2, 2006 6:19pm ET
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - RNA interference, whose discovery brought Americans Andrew Fire and Craig Mello the Nobel Prize in Medicine on Monday, is one of the hottest new areas of biotechnology and has spawned its own mini-industry.
The two researchers discovered that certain types of RNA could silence genes -- turning them off and altering a cell's functions. RNA stands for ribonucleic acid -- the molecule that transmits the genetic information encoded in DNA.
Plants use the RNA interference mechanism to fight off viruses and the discovery is being exploited by labs and companies around the world to try to find cures for cancer, certain types of blindness, and even bird flu.
"It's a classic example of basic research which has turned out to uncover a biological mechanism which now has tremendous potential for ... really impacting human health," said Dr. Jeremy Berg, head of the U.S. National Institute of General Medical Sciences, which funded Fire and Mello's work.
Less than a decade after Mello and Fire made their discovery in 1997, trials using RNA interference, or RNAi, to treat people are already under way.
"It has led to clinical trials on age-related macular degeneration but also there are trials for diabetes and HIV and influenza and most anything you can imagine where we know enough to know that overexpression of particular genes is important," Berg said in a telephone interview.
"Cancer, for example, is often caused by overactive genes, and quelling their activity could halt the disease," his institute said in a statement.
RNA interference can also stop HIV, polio, hepatitis C, and other viruses.
"It is also an incredibly powerful research tool," Berg added. Researchers can use it to turn off or turn down a gene and see what happens.
Every cell in the body carries the complete genetic code, written in DNA. These genes cannot all be firing full blast at the same time, so in each type of cell some genes are turned on, or expressing, and most of the others are off.
STOPPING TROUBLE AT THE SOURCE
"If you can think of a flood coming out of your kitchen sink to the kitchen floor, today's medicines simply act like a mop and mop up the water. With RNA interference we can shut off the faucet," John Maraganore, chief executive of Massachusetts-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc., said in a telephone interview.
Alnylam is working with Merck and Co., Medtronic Inc., Novartis, Biogen Idec and the U.S. government to develop RNAi to treat high cholesterol, respiratory syncytial virus, which can endanger infants, H5N1 avian influenza, the Ebola virus and some types of pain.
At least 23 different companies are focusing on RNA interference, either for therapy or research. Dublin, Ireland-based Research and Markets estimated the total value of the RNAi industry at $1 billion in 2004.
San Francisco-based Sirnais working with Allergan Inc. to test RNAi in people with age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness which is caused by a proliferation of blood vessels in the eye.
Sirna is working with GlaxoSmithKline to develop RNAi to fight respiratory diseases.
A German company called Cenix BioScience has teamed up with Merck to develop RNAi treatments and Maryland-based biotech company Intradigm, a small spinoff from Novartis, found a way to use RNAi to treat SARS in monkeys.
One problem faced by researchers is how to get the interfering RNA molecules into the body effectively, and different companies are taking different approaches.
? Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.
Here I have the original text that belongs to the title of this story. Finally it worked.:smartass:
Mon Oct 2, 2006 6:19pm ET
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - RNA interference, whose discovery brought Americans Andrew Fire and Craig Mello the Nobel Prize in Medicine on Monday, is one of the hottest new areas of biotechnology and has spawned its own mini-industry.
The two researchers discovered that certain types of RNA could silence genes -- turning them off and altering a cell's functions. RNA stands for ribonucleic acid -- the molecule that transmits the genetic information encoded in DNA.
Plants use the RNA interference mechanism to fight off viruses and the discovery is being exploited by labs and companies around the world to try to find cures for cancer, certain types of blindness, and even bird flu.
"It's a classic example of basic research which has turned out to uncover a biological mechanism which now has tremendous potential for ... really impacting human health," said Dr. Jeremy Berg, head of the U.S. National Institute of General Medical Sciences, which funded Fire and Mello's work.
Less than a decade after Mello and Fire made their discovery in 1997, trials using RNA interference, or RNAi, to treat people are already under way.
"It has led to clinical trials on age-related macular degeneration but also there are trials for diabetes and HIV and influenza and most anything you can imagine where we know enough to know that overexpression of particular genes is important," Berg said in a telephone interview.
"Cancer, for example, is often caused by overactive genes, and quelling their activity could halt the disease," his institute said in a statement.
RNA interference can also stop HIV, polio, hepatitis C, and other viruses.
"It is also an incredibly powerful research tool," Berg added. Researchers can use it to turn off or turn down a gene and see what happens.
Every cell in the body carries the complete genetic code, written in DNA. These genes cannot all be firing full blast at the same time, so in each type of cell some genes are turned on, or expressing, and most of the others are off.
STOPPING TROUBLE AT THE SOURCE
"If you can think of a flood coming out of your kitchen sink to the kitchen floor, today's medicines simply act like a mop and mop up the water. With RNA interference we can shut off the faucet," John Maraganore, chief executive of Massachusetts-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc., said in a telephone interview.
Alnylam is working with Merck and Co., Medtronic Inc., Novartis, Biogen Idec and the U.S. government to develop RNAi to treat high cholesterol, respiratory syncytial virus, which can endanger infants, H5N1 avian influenza, the Ebola virus and some types of pain.
At least 23 different companies are focusing on RNA interference, either for therapy or research. Dublin, Ireland-based Research and Markets estimated the total value of the RNAi industry at $1 billion in 2004.
San Francisco-based Sirnais working with Allergan Inc. to test RNAi in people with age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness which is caused by a proliferation of blood vessels in the eye.
Sirna is working with GlaxoSmithKline to develop RNAi to fight respiratory diseases.
A German company called Cenix BioScience has teamed up with Merck to develop RNAi treatments and Maryland-based biotech company Intradigm, a small spinoff from Novartis, found a way to use RNAi to treat SARS in monkeys.
One problem faced by researchers is how to get the interfering RNA molecules into the body effectively, and different companies are taking different approaches.
? Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.