New Mexico native shares Nobel Prize in chemistry
STOCKHOLM – Three scientists, including one who grew up in Raton, won the Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for showing how cells repair damaged DNA, work that’s inspired the development of new cancer treatments.
Swedish scientist Tomas Lindahl, American and Raton native Paul Modrich and U.S.-Turkish national Aziz Sancar shared the $960,000 award for research done in the 1970s and ’80s.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said their work on DNA repair had provided “fundamental knowledge” about how cells function and shed light on the mechanisms behind both cancer and aging.
The men “really laid the foundations for the whole field” of DNA repair, said Alan Ashworth, president of the cancer center at the University of California, San Francisco. “These really are the fathers of the field.”
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