To accelerate breakthroughs, the Damon Runyon Foundation provides today's best young scientists with funds to pursue innovative cancer research.
October 8, 2008
Martin Chalfie, PhD, of Columbia University, New York, and Roger Y. Tsien, PhD, of the University of California, San Diego, (both Former Damon Runyon Sponsors) were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2008 "for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP.” They shared the award with Osamu Shimomura, PhD, of Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, who originally isolated the protein from jellyfish. Dr. Chalfie first demonstrated the use of GFP as a genetic tag to visualize specific cells in the body. Dr. Tsien contributed to the understanding of how GFP fluoresces and developed numerous colors of related fluorescent proteins that allow scientists to visualize multiple proteins and cells at the same time. GFP enables researchers to watch cellular processes that were previously invisible, such as development of cells in an embryo and metastasis of cancer cells.
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Mark J. Zylka, PhD (Damon Runyon Fellow '00-'03) and colleagues at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, have discovered a new target for pain control. The protein, prostatic acid phosphatase or PAP, acts in pain-sensing neurons and appears to suppress pain eight times more effectively than the commonly-used drug morphine. Zylka hopes that these findings, which were published in the journal Neuron, will lead to new improved treatments for pain.
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