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Indian Physician Questions Nobel Prize Work

By LIFS June 10, 2008 at 9:05 PM
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An Indian American physician is challenging the theoretical framework behind a new class of drugs drawn from a Nobel Prize winning gene treatment that is at the cornerstone of medical cures for cancer, diabetes and other genetic diseases.

Jayakrishna Ambati, professor of ophthalmology at the University of Kentucky, and his research team are questioning the validity of the gene silencing method, which won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2006, arguing that the process works not by targeting the culprit gene, but by blocking blood-vessel growth, which can potentially harm other tissues

 
Their study, published in the British science journal Nature, questions the use of tiny synthetic molecules called small-interfering RNA (siRNA) to destroy disease bearing genes. Major  pharmaceutical firms Merck and Pfizer have spent billions of dollars to develop drugs based on the siRNA method.

 "That method was considered a breakthrough because then you could develop drugs to treat any disease as long as you knew what you were targeting," said Ambati. 

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Odds & Ends | Magazine | June 2008

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