CORRECTION APPENDED

A Harvard Medical School professor who discovered an enzyme key to aging and cancer won the “American Nobel” this weekend.

Professor of Genetics Jack W. Szostak was one of five scientists to win the 2006 Lasker Medical Research Award. Since 1962, more than half of the recipients of that accolade have later received a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

Szostak and two other Lasker winners were honored for their discovery of the enzyme telomerase. The other two recipients are a University of Pennsylvania psychiatrist whose research transformed the treatment of depression and a Carnegie Institution embryologist who is a pioneer in the study of chromosome structure.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Szostak studied how cells prevent the loss of crucial genetic information during cell division. He and Elizabeth H. Blackburn, a cell biologist at the University of California, San Francisco, predicted the presence of the enzyme—now known as telomerase—which allows cells to protect their genome from degradation.

Since Szostak’s early work on this enzyme, researchers have found that telomerase is closely tied to human cancers and aging.

Telomerase production is shut off in healthy cells, preventing division. Cancer cells often find a way to turn telomerase back on, allowing an uncontrolled division of cells. In order to treat a variety of cancers, researchers are currently investigating drugs that target telomerase.

“The thing with basic research is that it’s impossible to predict whether there will be applications,” Szostak said. “I studied telomeres just to find something interesting about how cells work. At that time we had no idea that it would have any significance.”

Since his work on telomerase, Szostak has shifted the focus of his study to evolutionary questions about the beginning of life. He is currently working towards the construction of an artificial cell that can grow and adapt to its environment.

“Evolutionary biology is an interesting field because it involves a lot of complicated chemistry that comes from simple biological processes,” Szostak said.

Szostak shares the award for basic research with Blackburn and Carol W. Greider, professor of molecular biology and genetics at Johns Hopkins University.

It’s not the first time that Blackburn has captured headlines. She was a member of President Bush’s Council on Bioethics, but Bush dismissed her in 2004.

At the time, some scientists charged that Bush fired her because she is an outspoken supporter of embryonic stem cell research.

The $100,000 prizes from the Lasker Foundation will be presented next Friday in New York.

—Staff writer Anupriya Singhal can be reached at asinghal@fas.harvard.edu.

CORRECTION

Harvard Professor of Genetics Jack W. Szostak was one of only three scientists who won the 2006 Lasker Basic Medical Research Award for discovering an enzyme linked to cancer and aging. A University of Pennsylvania psychologist won the Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research, and a Carnegie Institution cell biologist won the Lasker Award for Special Achievement. Due to an editing error, the Feb. 18 news article, "'American Nobel' For Genetics Professor," misstated the number of recipients of the basic research prize.