Three scientists bag Nobel for Medicine for innovative battle against parasites

Three scientists bag Nobel for Medicine for innovative battle against parasites

While two of the scientists invented drugs for combating roundworm parasites, the third developed a drug to combat malaria

The 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine has been awarded to three scientists from Ireland, Japan and China respectively, who have invented new drugs for use against malaria and infection caused by roundworm parasites.

The Nobel Committee on Monday named William C Campbell, Satoshi Omura and Youyou Tu as the winners of the prize this year. William C Campbell and Satoshi Omura were awarded for developing a novel therapy against infection caused by roundworm parasites while Youyou Tu was awarded for doing the same against malaria.

As per an official statement by the committee, Campbell and Ōmura discovered a new drug named Avermectin which is used in the treatment of river blindness and lymphatic filariasis. This drug has also shown efficacy against an increasing number of other parasitic diseases.

Ōmura, a Japanese microbiologist, isolated new strains of Streptomyces bacteria from soil samples and successfully cultured them in the laboratory. From many different cultures, he selected about 50 of the most promising. Carrying his work forward, William C Campbell, an expert in parasite biology working in the US, acquired these cultures and explored their efficacy. Campbell showed that a component from one of the cultures was remarkably efficient against parasites in domestic and farm animals.

This bioactive agent was named Avermectin. Later, the name was changed to Ivermectin after chemical modification. The drug was tested in humans with parasitic infections and was found to effectively kill parasitic larvae (microfilaria). Collectively, Ōmura and Campbell’s contributions led to the discovery of a new class of drugs with extraordinary efficacy against parasitic diseases, says the statement.

Similarly, Youyou Tu discovered Artemisinin, a drug that has significantly reduced mortality rates for patients suffering from malaria. Tu is an expert in traditional Chinese herbal medicine.  In her research, she found an extract from the plant Artemisia annua, as an interesting candidate. With the help of ancient literature, she successfully extracted the active component from Artemisia annua. Tu was the first to show that this component, later called Artemisinin, was highly effective against the malaria parasite, both in infected animals and in humans, says the committee statement.

“These two discoveries have provided humankind with powerful new means to combat these debilitating diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people annually. The consequences in terms of improved human health and reduced suffering are immeasurable,” says the committee.

Drug delivery pioneer Robert Langer receives engineering ‘Nobel’

Drug delivery pioneer Robert Langer receives engineering ‘Nobel’

Nearly two billion lives have been touched by his inventions

Robert Langer, an internationally-acclaimed inventor and engineer, with over 1,000 issued and pending patents and 1,300 published articles, has been hounoured with the Queen Elizabeth Prize (QEPrize) for Engineering. The award that has often been likened to a ‘Nobel’ for engineering is a global £1 million prize that celebrates the engineers responsible for a ground-breaking innovation that has been of global benefit to humanity.

Langerwho was born in 1948 is an American engineer is one of 11 Institute Professors at the US’ Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the highest honour that can be awarded to a faculty member. Prior to this role, he was the Germeshausen Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering. 

According to a press release by the QEPrize, from the start, Langer’s work has been characterised by a truly interdisciplinary approach. He developed his first drug delivery system during the 1970s while working with Judah Folkman, a Harvard professor and surgeon at Boston Children's Hospital. Folkman hypothesised that the growth of cancerous tumours could be restricted by stopping angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels, and he asked Langer to find a way to inhibit it. Once he had discovered how to create polymer micro- and nano-particles that could support and release sensitive protein-based drugs in the body, he used this technique to test possible drugs to control angiogenesis. He and Folkman isolated the first substances that blocked angiogenesis; such substances have been used to treat over 20 million patients. 

“Robert Langer took the guesswork out of designing controlled drug delivery systems, using his profound knowledge of chemical engineering, chemistry, biology and polymer science. There was originally great doubt that a polymer delivery system would be able to deliver the macro molecules required for various medical treatments, but he challenged that thinking and produced a methodology that is now the foundation of much of today’s drug delivery technology," says QEPrize Judge Professor Lynn Gladden.

Three scientists share Nobel for Chemistry for research on DNA repair

Three scientists share Nobel for Chemistry for research on DNA repair

Tomas Lindahl of UK’s Francis Crick Institute, Paul Modrich of USA’s Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Aziz Sancar of the University of North Carolina received the honours

The 2015 Nobel Prize for Chemistry was jointly awarded to three scientists from Sweden, Turkey and the United States for “mechanistic studies of DNA repair”, Professor Goran K Hansson, Permanent Secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, announced on Wednesday.

Tomas Lindahl of UK’s Francis Crick Institute and Clare Hall Lab, Paul Modrich of US’ Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Aziz Sancar of the University of North Carolina received the honours.

The new insights on the functioning of cells have wide-ranging applications. It can be used, for instance, in the development of new cancer treatments.

Background

DNA molecules are continuously damaged not only by ultraviolet radiation, free radicals, carcinogens and nearly seven million cell divisions a day, but also because they are inherently unstable. However, DNA does not disintegrate because molecular systems continuously repair DNA.

Lindahl’s base excision repair

Tomas Lindahl developed a molecular machinery called base excision repair, which constantly counteracts the collapse of our DNA. This mechanism repairs DNA when the base of a nucleotide (the building block of nucleic acids such as DNA and RNA) is damaged. In 1996, Lindahl recreated base excision repair in humans in vitro.

Sancar’s nucleotide excision repair

This development deals with repair of damage to DNA caused by ultraviolet rays or carcinogenic substances such as cigarette smoke. By studying dark systems used by bacteria for repairing ultraviolet damage, Sancar found enzymes that could identify ultraviolet damage and make two incisions in the DNA strand, one on each side of the damaged part. A fragment of 12-13 nucleotides, including the injury, could then be removed.

Modrich’s mismatch repair

Mismatch repair occurs when DNA repliactes during cell division. Modrich constructed a bacterial virus with several occurences of mismatching bases in the DNA. He then let these viruses infect bacteria only to find that the bacteria corrected these mismatches. When DNA is copied during cell division, mismatching nucleotides are sometimes incorporated into the new strand. Among 1000 such mistakes, mismatch repair fixes only one.