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Page 6A • Thursday, October 9 , 2003
Americans win Nobel Prize
By Karl Ritter
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Americans win Nobel Prize in chemistry
Down syndrome
detected sooner
STOCKHOLM, Sweden
Americans Peter Agre and Roderick
MacKinnon won the Nobel Prize in chem
istry on Wednesday for their research into
how key materials enter or leave the cells
in the body.
The pair received the award for their
discoveries concerning tiny pores called
“channels” on the surface of cells, the
Royal Swedish Academy said Wednesday.
Agre, 54, is at the Johns Hopkins
University School of Medicine in
Baltimore, and MacKinnon, 47, is with the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute at The
Rockefeller University in New York.
Their research is important in under
standing many diseases, like those affect
ing the kidneys, heart, muscles and the
nervous system, the academy said.
Agre was cited for his work in 1988 for
isolating the long-sought channel that
transports water through a cell’s walls.
The discovery opened the door to a
whole series of biochemical, physiological
and genetic studies of water channels in
bacteria, plants and mammals. Today,
researchers can follow in detail a water
molecule on its way through the cell mem
brane and understand why only water, not
other small molecules or ions, can pass, the
academy said.
MacKinnon was honored for his work
for his work on ion channels, through
which electrically charged particles pass.
He surprised other scientists when in
1998 he was able to determine the structure
of a potassium channel, the channel that
transports charged particles of potassium.
As a result, scientists can now “see”
ions flowing through channels that can be
opened and closed by signals from the cell.
The pair will share a check for 10 mil
lion kronor, or $1.3 million.
Nobel Foundation statutes stipulate that
no more than three winners can share a
prize and the scientific committees often
Americans Peter Agre and Roderick MacKinnon won the Nobel
Prize in chemistry Wednesday for their research on how key
materials enter or leave the cells in the body, work that illuminates
diseases of the heart, kidneys and nervous system.
By Linda A. Johnson
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
2003 Nobel Prize
in chemistry
Past winners
2002 • John B. Fenn, United States,
Koichi Tanaka, Japan and Kurt
Wuethrich, Switzerland
Peter Agre
United States
Roderick
MacKinnon
United States
2001 • William S. Knowles and K.
Barry Sharpless, United States,
and Ryoji Noyori, Japan
2000 • Alan J. Heeger, United
States, Alan G. MacDiarmid,
United States, and Hideki
Shirakawa, Japan
1999 - Ahmed H. Zewail, U.S.
SOURCE: Associated Press
AP
choose the maximum number, finding it
hard to single out researchers. Often the
awards are given for discoveries made
after decades of research.
Nobel gave little guidance other than to
say the chemistry prize should go to those
who “shall have conferred the greatest
benefit on mankind” and “shall have made
the most important chemical discovery or
improvement.”
Last year’s winners were John B.
Fenn, of Virginia Commonwealth
University in Richmond, Va.; Koichi
Tanaka, of Shimadzu Corp. in Kyoto,
Japan; and Kurt Wuethrich, a scientist
with the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology in Zurich and the Scripps
Research Institute in San Diego.
They were awarded for inventing tech
niques used to identify and analyze pro
teins, advances that revolutionized the hunt
for new medicines and proved useful for
diagnosing some cancers.
The announcements of this year’s
Nobel awards started last week with the lit
erature prize going to J.M. Coetzee of
South Africa.
On Monday, American Paul C.
Lauterbur, and Briton Sir Peter Mansfield
were selected for the 2003 Nobel Prize in
physiology or medicine for discoveries
leading to a technique that reveals images
of the body’s inner organs.
The physics prize on Tuesday went to
Alexei A. Abrikosov, Anthony J. Leggett,
and Vitaly L. Ginzburg, for their work con
cerning two phenomena called supercon
ductivity and superfluidity.
The Nobel science awards were to cul
minate later Wednesday, with the econom
ics prize, the only award not established in
the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred
Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.
The Nobel Peace Prize was to be
announced Friday in Oslo, Norway.
The medicine, physics, chemistry, liter
ature and peace prizes were first awarded
in 1901. The Nobel Memorial Prize in
Economic Sciences was established sepa
rately in 1968 by the Swedish central bank,
but it is grouped with the other awards.
The prizes are presented to the winners
on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s
death in 1896.
A new combination of blood
tests and ultrasound can detect
fetuses with Down syndrome
sooner and more accurately than
standard U.S. screening tests,
offering mothers-to-be more
peace of mind and more time to
decide whether to end a pregnan
cy, researchers say.
The study of 8.216 women at a
dozen U.S. medical centers con
firms findings in England and
elsewhere, where the combination
is already widely used.
“It’s earlier by about a month,
so we’ve moved the standard test
ing to the first trimester and
improved its accuracy,” said lead
researcher Dr. Ronald Wapner,
chairman of obstetrics and gyne
cology at Drexel University
College of Medicine in
Philadelphia. “The absolute
biggest advantage is this allows
women to make private decisions”
before they are visibly pregnant.
The usual blood screenings
done in this country identify up to
75 percent of Down syndrome
babies, but do not yield results
until about 20 weeks into pregnan
cy, when abortion is more danger
ous for women and often difficult
to obtain.
The new combination — two
blood tests, ultrasound and the
mother’s age — correctly identi
fied 85 percent of fetuses with
Down syndrome and yielded
results at about 12 weeks.
Nine percent of the time, ii
incorrectly indicated a fetus prob
ably had Down syndrome.
About one in 800 babies has
Down syndrome, the most com
mon chromosomal birth defect
Children with the syndrome suffer
mental retardation and deformities
such as a broad, fiat face, short
hands and a small head and ears.
When the four indicators
together show a high probability
of Down syndrome, women can
choose a definitive test. In chori
onic villus sampling, cells are
withdrawn from the placenta with
a needle, usually at 10 to 12 weeks
of pregnancy. In amniocentesis,
which is more commonly done in
this country, fluid is drawn from
the amniotic sac with a needle; it
is done at 14 weeks or later. Both
techniques carry about a 1 percent
risk of miscarriage.
The study was reported in
Thursday’s New England Journal
of Medicine.
Dr. Mark I. Evans, director of
the Institute for Genetics and Fetal
Medicine at St.
Luke’s's/Roosevelt Hospital
Center in New York, said the study
will cause a gradual shift from
second-trimester screening to this
method.
“There have been literally hun
dreds of thousands of patients
evaluated worldwide who confirm
these data,” said Evans, president
of the Fetal Medicine Foundation
of America. “It’s being routinely
used all over the United Kingdom,
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