Damon Runyon identifies today’s most brilliant early career scientists and funds their innovative cancer research.
- Today’s Promising Areas of Cancer Research
- What is Cancer?
- A Broken Pipeline?
A Generation of Science at Risk
- ARISE Report
Early Career Scientists and High-Risk, High Reward Research - American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Why We’re Losing the War on Cancer (And How To Win It)
Clifton Leaf - Fortune Magazine
October 7, 2009 > Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009
Thomas A. Steitz, PhD (Former Damon Runyon Sponsor) of Yale University, New Haven was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome.” He shares the award with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, PhD, of MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, United Kingdom, and Ada E. Yonath, PhD, of Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. Based upon the information in DNA, ribosomes make proteins; there are tens of thousands of proteins in the body, all providing different functions. They build and control life at the chemical level. Using X-ray crystallography, the awardees showed what the ribosome looks like and how it functions.
As the target of many known antibiotics, the bacterial ribosome is a structure of major therapeutic importance. It is hoped that an understanding of precisely how antibiotics interact with the ribosome will allow the design of new antibiotics to tackle drug-resistant bacteria. Each of the awardees has imaged the molecular interactions between ribosomes and antibiotics, providing key data to help guide drug design of new antibiotics.
Click here for the press release.