The Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded Monday to Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNA, a fundamental principle governing how gene activity is regulated.
The Nobel Assembly said that their discovery is “proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function.”
Ambros performed the research that led to his prize at Harvard University. He is currently a professor of natural science at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Rukvun’s research was performed at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard Medical School, where he’s a professor of genetics, said Thomas Perlmann, Secretary-General of the Nobel Committee.
Ambros was born in Hanover, N.H., and received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he also did postdoctoral research, and was a principal investigator at Harvard University, according to the Nobel website. Ambros is now a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester.
Ruvkun, a native of Berkeley, Calif., received his Ph.D. from Harvard University, was a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and became a principal investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in 1985.
MGH officials said research into the potential of microRNAs for the diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of disease has expanded from the two original papers published by Ruvkun and Ambros in 1993 to 176,000 papers today.
“Current knowledge suggests that most plant and animal genomes, including the human genome, contain more than 1,000 microRNAs, which control many protein-coding messenger RNAs and may be involved in a broad range of normal- and disease-related activities,” MGH officials said in a statement. “Human microRNAs have been implicated in heart disease, in viral pathogenesis and in regulation of neural function and disease. Human therapies based on microRNAs are in clinical trials for heart disease, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, and more.”
University of Massachusetts President Marty Meehan celebrated the pair for their work.
The previous UMass laureate was Craig C. Mello, who in 2006 won the Nobel in physiology or medicine with collaborator Andrew Fire.
Mello, a professor at UMass Chan Medical School, and Fire, who teaches at Stanford, also conducted groundbreaking RNA work, discovering “a phenomenon dubbed RNA interference,” the Nobel site says. “In this phenomenon, double-stranded RNA blocks messenger RNA so that certain genetic information is not converted during protein formation. This silences these genes, i.e. renders them inactive.”
Last year, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman for discoveries that enabled the creation of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 that were critical in slowing the pandemic.
The medicine prize has been awarded 114 times to a total of 227 laureates — the title given to winners. Only 13 women have won been awarded the prize that carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel.
The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.
Nobel announcements continue with the physics prize on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics award on Oct. 14.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. Travis Andersen of the Globe staff contributed.