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2 American scientists, 1 Briton share Nobel Prize in medicine for gene manipulation
The Associated Press
Issue date: 10/9/07 Section: News
NEW YORK (AP) _ As a child in Italy during World War II, he lived for years on the streets and in orphanages. Six decades later, as a scientist in the United States, Mario Capecchi joined two other researchers in winning the Nobel Prize in medicine.
Their work led to a powerful and widely used technique to manipulate genes in mice, which has helped scientists study heart disease, diabetes, cancer, cystic fibrosis and other diseases.
The $1.54 million prize was awarded Monday to Capecchi, 70, of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City; Oliver Smithies, 82, a native of Britain now at University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and Sir Martin J. Evans, 66, of Cardiff University in Wales.
Their "gene-targeting" technique lets scientists deactivate or modifying individual genes in mice and observe how those changes affect the animals. That in turn gives clues about what those genes do in human health and disease.
The work has had "a revolutionary effect on the ability to understand how genes work," said Richard Woychik, director of The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, a center for mouse genetics.
The prize is a particularly striking accomplishment for Capecchi (pronounced kuh-PEK'-ee). A native of Italy, he was separated from his mother at age 3 when the Gestapo took her to the Dachau concentration camp as a political prisoner in 1941. His mother, a poet, and his father, an Italian military officer, were not married.
Capecchi spent a year with a peasant family, until the money his mother left for his care ran out. At age 4, "I started wandering the streets," he recalled Monday. For about four years, he lived on the streets or in orphanages, and he ended up in a hospital with malnutrition.
Dachau was liberated in 1945 and his mother survived.
"Then she set out to find me," searching through hospital records. "I was in a hospital and when they keep you in a hospital, they didn't want you to run around. They took your clothes away. She came and bought me an outfit."
Their work led to a powerful and widely used technique to manipulate genes in mice, which has helped scientists study heart disease, diabetes, cancer, cystic fibrosis and other diseases.
The $1.54 million prize was awarded Monday to Capecchi, 70, of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City; Oliver Smithies, 82, a native of Britain now at University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and Sir Martin J. Evans, 66, of Cardiff University in Wales.
Their "gene-targeting" technique lets scientists deactivate or modifying individual genes in mice and observe how those changes affect the animals. That in turn gives clues about what those genes do in human health and disease.
The work has had "a revolutionary effect on the ability to understand how genes work," said Richard Woychik, director of The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, a center for mouse genetics.
The prize is a particularly striking accomplishment for Capecchi (pronounced kuh-PEK'-ee). A native of Italy, he was separated from his mother at age 3 when the Gestapo took her to the Dachau concentration camp as a political prisoner in 1941. His mother, a poet, and his father, an Italian military officer, were not married.
Capecchi spent a year with a peasant family, until the money his mother left for his care ran out. At age 4, "I started wandering the streets," he recalled Monday. For about four years, he lived on the streets or in orphanages, and he ended up in a hospital with malnutrition.
Dachau was liberated in 1945 and his mother survived.
"Then she set out to find me," searching through hospital records. "I was in a hospital and when they keep you in a hospital, they didn't want you to run around. They took your clothes away. She came and bought me an outfit."
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