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'Kiss of Death' Discoverers Get Nobel Prize
baldinux writes "Science Daily has written an article describing the cellular process of regulated protein degredation, which has landed three people the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. According to the article, this finding could greatly help researchers understand ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation, making it possible to develop drugs to treat cervical cancer, for example."
Once the drug companies make it.
And the FDA approves it.
And it's overcharged for in America.
And everyone buys it in Canada.
10 years later.
Hey . . didn't they try that on Jurrasic Park . . look where *that* got them.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Whoa! What a loaded statement! Nothing else need be said.
how long until they patent "A process for breaking down and degrading proteins" and send cease-and-desist letters telling everyone to stop digesting ny meat they eat this instant.
The article talked a lot about protein, but no kissing!
Biochemists could, I presume, tailor ubiquitin to grab up undesirable proteins and still have the degradation function work.
Imagine all the diseases that come from bad proteins! This could unleash a new class of therapies.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
From the first couple of comments, it seems people don't know what the heck this is talking about. Let me explain:
The human body has a natural mechanism for recycling proteins. What nobody understood, however, was how it knew what proteins to recycle - after all, if proteins were just recycled randomly we'd all be globs of jelly.
So then these guys came along and figured it out: when the body wants to recycle a protein, it attaches another protein as a label, called ubiquitin.
The science isn't exactly new - 1980s - but it was significant, and best of all, pure research. (So you can stop with the whining about drugs)
Congrats to these guys. It really is an honor for a University to have a Nobel Laureate in their staff, and UC Irvine just got one. =]
Without a proper flamewar, Anonymous was undecided on what shell to run.
The degradation is not indiscriminate but takes place through a process that is controlled in detail so that the proteins to be broken down at any given moment are given a molecular label, a 'kiss of death', to be dramatic. The labelled proteins are then fed into the cells' "waste disposers", the so called proteasomes, where they are chopped into small pieces and destroyed.
Isn't this similar to the way OO languages are doing, create an object, use it and dispose it.
Actuall, isn't this the way we are doing things on a daily basis? It's interesting to find out that even our body is unknowingly doing almost the same process.
Is cervical cancer different from other cancer? I'm not trolling here, I'm genuinely confused. Why mention that over other forms of cancer - is there something about this research that limits the types of cancer that can be fought with the resulting drugs?
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77 77 77 2e 6d 65 6c 76 69 6e 73 2e 63 6f 6d
I recently learned (through an unpleasant personal, but not-quite-that-personal, experience) that HSV, an STD, is the "major cause of cervical cancer".
Watch out, guys. Especially watch out ladies.
-Peter
Didn't Jet Li invent the Kiss of Death?
So, then we just need something to elimiate this ubiquitin and we'll live forever? Sweet!
The cancer part is interesting - I hadn't thought about that in my previous post. The idea is to engineer ubiquitin to attach itself to cancer cells, therefore causing the body to kill the proteins inside, effectively killing the cells. (Well, cells are proteins.)
It's a very interesting concept, not limited to any type of cancer as far as I know, but again, this is 1980s research, not brand new as the article suggests, but still exciting.
Without a proper flamewar, Anonymous was undecided on what shell to run.
"Kiss of Death" causes "cervical cancer"? Nerds, that's just an excuse not to please your girlfriend.
--
make install -not war
(Late) Frederick Reines at the School of Physics and Astronomy at UCI:
1995 Nobel Laureate Frederick Reines [1918-1998] Distinguished Professor Emeritus Elementary Particle Physics
Professor Reines earned his M.E. and M.S. degrees from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey and his Ph.D. from New York University in 1944. He was a member and then Group Leader in the theoretical division of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory from 1944 to 1959. He was a Professor and Head of the Physics Department at Case Institute of Technology from 1959 to 1966 and Professor and founding Dean of Physical Sciences at UCI.
Professor Reines' work has been recognized by membership in the National Academy of Sciences and many other awards including the National Medal of Science. He was known for his work on the detection and study of the neutrino. We all mourn his passing in 1998.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
How long before this information can be used practically, and how does one go about doing this? My knowledge of the subject is little to none, but my curiosity is high considering cancer has struck my mother in the past. Any info would be appreciated.
I read in another article that these folks worked on this research in the '80-es. It sure is a long way to a nobel prize! The youngest of the three guys is 57 years old. The other two are 67 and 73.
Well, I should get really busy if I want to get my Nobel prize while I can still enjoy the money and fame.
Sigged!
You might find the information over at the Nobel website more interresting: http://nobelprize.org/chemistry/laureates/2004/pub lic.html.
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
Yet another University of California recipient this week...kudos to the world's best public university system.
My Bad...
We'll finally be rid of that damned Atkins diet!
Not very enthusing since they haven't even found a cure for the common cold yet.
that it's ubiquitous.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Hmm... I read that drug name in the 'dept' where the title contains 'Kiss of Death' and thought "you be quitting", e.g., committing suicide, putting in a two-weeks notice, etc. "Regulated degredation of proteins" isn't all that intense, is it (aside from the obvious "they got a Nobel for it")?
The biggest problem to developing any potential theapies from these groundbreaking discoveries is to figure out how to target particular proteins or classes of proteins. There are numerous E3 ubiquitin ligases in cells that target a varety of proteins for degradation. However, the molecular mechanisms by which this recognition takes place is still rather uncertain. The structure of the molecular interaction must be determined at atomic resolution (A difficult process which commonly uses X-ray crystallography and very, very intensive computing).
I see two methods which would lead to useful therapies:
The first is the simplest and will therefore also most likely be the first viable strategy: harnessing natural ubiquitin ligases to target and downregulate harmful proteins. This means that any therapies will be limited to natural ubiquitination processes. Humankind will find ways to make these reactions better, or ways stimulate them in diseased cells.
The second approach is de novo design. Once the structure of the target is determined, enzymes can be desgined to target it for ubiquitination/degradation. However, this requires an understanding of biochemistry far beyond what currently exists. Not only does the therapeutic enzyme have to recognize the target, but it must also catalyze the ubiquitination reaction. At this time, I do not believe that anyone has designed a functional protein-based enzyme from the ground up. This technique has greater potential, as we could target ANY protein we dislike, but we are not quite able to implement it yet.
"Me fail English, that's unpossible." --Ralphie
...it's not actually chemistry. It's biology. It's not the fault of us chemists that biology doesn't get a prize.
I recall reading somewhere that proteins and their production / destruction getting messed up was one of the causes of general aging. Sounds kind of brave-new-world-ish but cool nonetheless.
Queue the morality questions along the lines of genetic engineering.
Targeted protein degradation has applicaitons beyond anti-cancer therapies. Alzheimer's Disease seems to be caused by the build-up of amyoloid beta protein in neurons, which is due to the failure to degrade this protein. One potential therapy is to use other ubiquitin ligases to target amyoloid beta for degradation as a method to break up protein plaques.
Similarly, antiviral potential exists as well. For example, if we could engineer ubiquitin ligases to target HIV proteases (The target of the protease inhibitor component of anti-HIV "cocktails"), we would have another method to hamper viral replication.
As with all new developments, however, there exist numerous problems that must to be overcome before we see practical and clinical results.
"Me fail English, that's unpossible." --Ralphie
Here Ciechanover & Herhsko got the Lasker prize for ubiquitination a few years back. Getting the Lasker prize is a pretty good indicator for receiving the Noble as well.
inhibit proteasome activity. One might argue about how useful it is (it is certainly not a miracle cure) but vecade (bortezomib) is already FDA approved. It is pretty clearly the best treatment available for replased myeloma.
His name is Alex Varshavsky. Many thought that when the Nobel prize was awarded for ubiquitin-regulated degradation of proteins ("the kiss of death"), he would be among the winners. He's won a number of big scientific awards, usually with Avram Hershko (one of today's winners). The suprise today was that Varshavsky was left off and Irwin Rose (UCI) was included.
So the body attaches a tag on the protein, and says, "You be quittin'!"
Sounds like a good way to handle corporate restructuring, to me.
Music speeds up when you yawn, but does not change pitch.
"This could unleash a new class of terror."
MY SECRET DIARIES
so... is ubiquitin the antidote to unobtanium? :)
Can the research now focus on how to attatch ubiquitin to goatse?
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
It's the exact opposite of mark-and-sweep, it's mark-and-destroy. This is possible because there are no long-distance "references" - all "referenced" objects are adjacent.
I suppose, in programming, this is much closer to refcounting, where each object's utility can be fully determined by looking at just that one object.
Does anyone here reading Slashdot even have a cervix?
:-)
Sorry had to ask..
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
HPV (human papillomavirus) is the one that's strongly linked to cervical cancers. There are vaccine trials underway.
They'll become standard course of treatment in the not too distant future, eradicating a large percentage of cervical cancers. Score one for the good guys.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
By disabling ubiquitin, you keep the Caspase protein (a signalling protein) circulating in the cytosol(solution inside of) of a cell. This Caspase protein will signal the cell to begin what is called programmed cell death. Programmed cell death will cause a chain of events that leads to a cell lysing itself(breaking open) - dying. This is useful, because cancers often block the programmed cell death response in order to keep cells alive and replicating. Programmed cell death is a regulatory mechanism of the larger system to prevent cancers and other badness from occurring.
- Matt
Speaking of which, just added velcade to our medical billing yesterday.
Our cost $900, patient cost $3400.
It's not always the drug companies that make things expensive, a lot of times its care providers... who are partially greedy and partially have to make up for a lot of false claim litigation in a sue happy country. Not to mention it's hard enough to get people/insurance companies to pay you in the first place.
It's exactly the same story -- the Medicine & Physiology prize rarely goes to physicians (or even the somewhat dying breed of non-molecular biologists that go by the name of "physiologist") -- instead both the Medicine and Chemistry prize tend to go to molecular biologists/cell biologists/biochemists (no real difference between those names).
Considering that I'm a genomicist, I should be happy -- my near infinitesimal chances of winning a Nobel are doubled, but still, I can see that actual physicians and chemists might be miffed that their prizes have been co-opted
Apparently, you aren't dating anyone.