Two Americans Win Nobel Prize

Americans Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello won the Nobel Prize in medicine Monday for discovering a powerful way to turn off the effect of specific genes, opening a potential new avenue for fighting diseases as diverse as cancer and AIDS.

The process, called RNA interference, also is being studied for treating such conditions as hepatitis virus infection and heart disease. It already widely used in basic science as a method to study the function of genes.

Fire, 47, of Stanford University, and Mello, 45, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, published their seminal work in 1998.

Erna Moller, a member of the Nobel committee, said their research helped shed new light on a complicated process that had confused researchers for years.

“It was like opening the blinds in the morning,” she said. “Suddenly you can see everything clearly.”

By MATT MOORE and KARL RITTER, Associated Press Writers. For the full article go to: Print Story: 2 Americans win Nobel Prize in medicine on Yahoo! News