2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Predictions
Curator: Larry H Bernstein, MD, FCAP
Nobel Prize Predictions See Honors for Gene Editing Technology
By Julie Steenhuysen
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/851475?
Scientists selected as “Citation Laureates” rank in the top 1% of citations in their research areas.
“That is a signpost that the research wielded a lot of impact,” said Christopher King, an analyst with IP&S who helped select the winners.
Among the predicted winners for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry are Emmanuelle Charpentier of Helmholtz Center for Infection Research in Germany and Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley. They were picked for their development of the CRISPR-Cas9 method for genome editing.
The technique has taken biology by storm, igniting fierce patent battles between start-up companies and universities, and touching off ethical debates over its potential for editing human embryos.
Missing from the list is Feng Zhang, a researcher at the MIT-Harvard Broad Institute, who owns a broad U.S. patent on the technology, which is the subject of a legal battle. King said he was aware of Zhang’s claims on the technology, but noted that his scientific citations did not rise to the level of a nomination.
Other contenders for the chemistry prize, which will be awarded on Oct. 7 in Stockholm, include John Goodenough of the University of Texas Austin, and Stanley Whittingham of Binghamton University in New York for research leading to the development of the lithium-ion battery.
Also in contention is Carolyn Bertozzi of Stanford University for her contributions to “bioorthogonal chemistry,” which refers to chemical reactions in live cells and organisms. Bertozzi’s lab is using the process to develop smart probes for medical imaging.
For the Nobel in medicine, to be announced Oct. 5, Thomson Reuters picked Kazutoshi Mori of Kyoto University and Peter Walter of the University of California, San Francisco. They showed that a mechanism known as the unfolded protein response acts as a “quality control system” inside cells, deciding whether damaged cells live or die.
Other contenders include Jeffrey Gordon of Washington University in St. Louis for showing a relationship between diet and metabolism and microbes that live in the human gut.
The group also picked a trio of researchers – Alexander Rudensky of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi of Osaka University, and Ethan Shevach of the National Institutes of Health – for discoveries relating to regulatory T cells and the function of Foxp3, a master regulator of these immune cells.
For the prizes in physics and economics, to be announced Oct. 6 and 12 respectively, Thomson Reuters predicts winners from scientists who helped pave the way for making X-ray lasers and work that helped explain the impact of policy decisions on labor markets and consumer demand.
Science enthusiasts can weigh in with their own predictions by taking part in Thomson Reuters’ “People’s Choice” prizes at StateOfInnovation.com.
Other articles on this topic published on this Open Access Online Scientific Journal include the following:
UPDATED – Medical Interpretation of the Genomics Frontier – CRISPR – Cas9: Gene Editing Technology for New Therapeutics
Authors and Curators: Larry H Bernstein, MD, FCAP and Stephen J Williams, PhD
and
Curator: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN
Since the October 1st 2015, Emmanuelle Charpentier is employed at the Max-Planck-Institute for Infection Biology (Berlin, Germany), not at theHelmholtz Center for Infection Research .
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This is very insightful. There is no doubt that there is the bias you refer to. 42 years ago, when I was postdocing in biochemistry/enzymology before completing my residency in pathology, I knew that there were very influential mambers of the faculty, who also had large programs, and attracted exceptional students. My mentor, it was said (although he was a great writer), could draft a project on toilet paper and call the NIH. It can’t be true, but it was a time in our history preceding a great explosion. It is bizarre for me to read now about eNOS and iNOS, and about CaMKII-á, â, ã, ä – isoenzymes. They were overlooked during the search for the genome, so intermediary metabolism took a back seat. But the work on protein conformation, and on the mechanism of action of enzymes and ligand and coenzyme was just out there, and became more important with the research on signaling pathways. The work on the mechanism of pyridine nucleotide isoenzymes preceded the work by Burton Sobel on the MB isoenzyme in heart. The Vietnam War cut into the funding, and it has actually declined linearly since.
A few years later, I was an Associate Professor at a new Medical School and I submitted a proposal that was reviewed by the Chairman of Pharmacology, who was a former Director of NSF. He thought it was good enough. I was a pathologist and it went to a Biochemistry Review Committee. It was approved, but not funded. The verdict was that I would not be able to carry out the studies needed, and they would have approached it differently. A thousand young investigators are out there now with similar letters. I was told that the Department Chairmen have to build up their faculty. It’s harder now than then. So I filed for and received 3 patents based on my work at the suggestion of my brother-in-law. When I took it to Boehringer-Mannheim, they were actually clueless.
This is very insightful. There is no doubt that there is the bias you refer to. 42 years ago, when I was postdocing in biochemistry/enzymology before completing my residency in pathology, I knew that there were very influential mambers of the faculty, who also had large programs, and attracted exceptional students. My mentor, it was said (although he was a great writer), could draft a project on toilet paper and call the NIH. It can’t be true, but it was a time in our history preceding a great explosion. It is bizarre for me to read now about eNOS and iNOS, and about CaMKII-á, â, ã, ä – isoenzymes. They were overlooked during the search for the genome, so intermediary metabolism took a back seat. But the work on protein conformation, and on the mechanism of action of enzymes and ligand and coenzyme was just out there, and became more important with the research on signaling pathways. The work on the mechanism of pyridine nucleotide isoenzymes preceded the work by Burton Sobel on the MB isoenzyme in heart. The Vietnam War cut into the funding, and it has actually declined linearly since.
A few years later, I was an Associate Professor at a new Medical School and I submitted a proposal that was reviewed by the Chairman of Pharmacology, who was a former Director of NSF. He thought it was good enough. I was a pathologist and it went to a Biochemistry Review Committee. It was approved, but not funded. The verdict was that I would not be able to carry out the studies needed, and they would have approached it differently. A thousand young investigators are out there now with similar letters. I was told that the Department Chairmen have to build up their faculty. It’s harder now than then. So I filed for and received 3 patents based on my work at the suggestion of my brother-in-law. When I took it to Boehringer-Mannheim, they were actually clueless.