3 Scientists Win Nobel Prize in Medicine

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine, Sir Martin Evans, Monday Oct. 8, 2007, seen in in Cambridge, England, following the announcement of the award. Evans and two Americans, Mario R. Capecchi, and Oliver Smithies, shared the Nobel Prize in medicine announced on Monday for groundbreaking stem-cell research on mice that helped establish the role of individual genes in human ailments including diabetes, heart disease and cancer. (AP Photo/Jason Bye, PA) A British scientist was one of three people awarded a Nobel Prize today for work on "knockout mice" that revolutionised biomedicine. Sir Martin Evans, professor of mammalian genetics at Cardiff University, played a key role in the creation of genetically engineered mice that replicate human diseases. See PA Story SCIENCE Nobel. Photo credit should read: Jason Bye/PA Wire (Jason Bye - AP)

Capecchi's work has uncovered the roles of genes involved in organ development in mammals, the committee said. Evans developed strains of gene-altered mice to study cystic fibrosis, and Smithies created strains to study such conditions as high blood pressure and heart disease.

To create gene-altered mice, researchers introduce a genetic change into mouse embryonic stem cells. These cells are then injected into mouse embryos. The mice born from these embryos are bred to produce offspring with the changed genes.

In 1989, the first mice born with genes manipulated through the technique was announced. More than 10,000 different genes in mice have since been studied this way, the Nobel committee said. That's about half the genes the rodents have.

Apart from making mice with altered DNA, the work has also shown how to manipulate genes in human embryonic stem cells for lab research. Such basic studies can help scientists learn how to turn the cells into specialized cells that might prove useful in therapy, said Doug Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.

And scientists hope that by putting disease-related genes into human embryonic cells for lab studies, they can learn how the diseases develop and screen potential therapies, said John Gearhart, a stem cell expert at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

The prize-winning work has "formed the foundation for much of what we do" in human embryonic stem cell research, Melton said.

Evans, asked Monday about the prize while visiting his daughter in Cambridge, England, said, "I haven't come to terms with it yet. In many ways it is the boyhood aspiration of science, isn't it? And here I am unexpectedly with it. It's amazing."

Moments after a 5 a.m. call from Sweden, Smithies called the Nobel "very gratifying."

"My work was never toward getting the Nobel Prize," Smithies told The Associated Press over a cup of tea at his lab a few hours after the Nobel committee called with the news. "It was solving a problem, and enjoying the solution."

Smithies said he hopes winning the prize will make it easier to secure funding for other work.

The medicine prize was the first of the six prestigious awards to be announced this year. The others are chemistry, physics, literature, peace and economics.

The prizes are handed out every year on Dec. 10, the anniversary of award founder Alfred Nobel's death in 1896.

Since the medicine prize was first awarded in 1901, 90 Americans and 29 Britons have received it.

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Associated Press writers Brock Vergakis in Salt Lake City and Steve Hartsoe in Chapel Hill, N.C., contributed to this report.

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On the Net:

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