Nobel medicine laureates welcome 'marvellous honour'
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Oliver Smithies
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Mario Capecchi
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Martin Evans
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The three winners of the 2007 Nobel Medicine Prize said they were
delighted to share the prestigious award for research they conducted
independently of one another. "It's been a marvelous honor for the
people working in the lab as well as the university," 70-year-old Mario
Capecchi of the United States told AFP.
He shared the prize with compatriot Oliver Smithies, 82, and
Britain's Martin Evans, 66, for their discoveries on how to genetically
manipulate mouse embryonic stem cells, leading to laboratory rodents
that replicate human disease.
The three have never worked together, however. Smithies told AFP that
when he got an early morning call from Sweden, he was pretty sure of the
result.
Smithies said he is currently studying kidney function and hopes that
his Nobel-winning research can be used to "correct a gene in a useful
way to help humans."
"I would like to be able to see us use it, for example, to take bone
marrow from a person who has a cell disease and correct the gene and
then return the bone marrow to the person to help them get over their
disease," he said.
AFP
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