Nobel medicine prize goes to cell biologist Guenter Blobel

Dr. Guenter Blobel was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for protein research

October 11, 1999
Web posted at: 11:59 a.m. EST (1559 GMT)

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (CNN) -- The Nobel Prize for Medicine went to Dr. Guenter Blobel of The Rockefeller University in New York Monday for pioneering research on the inner workings of the cell. Blobel's discoveries have shed new light on diseases such as cystic fibrosis, and laid the foundation for bioengineered drugs such as insulin and growth hormone.

The prize is worth nearly $1 million.

Blobel's work has had "immense impact" on studies of the cell, the Nobel assembly said in announcing the prize.

The cell biologist told a New York City press conference Monday that he was surprised, shocked and deeply asleep when word reached him that he'd won the Nobel Prize.

He then thanked Rockefeller University and his younger collaborators. "It has been the most rewarding experience to work with people in their mid-20s and 30s and to learn from them," he said. "I would probably become stale if I didn't have this long list of people to work with."

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German-born Blobel, 63, was cited for discovering that proteins carry signals that act as zip codes or luggage tags, helping them find their correct location within the one billion protein molecules inside a single cell.

Errors in these signals cause some hereditary diseases including primary hyperoxaluria, which causes kidney stones at an early age, as well as some forms of inherited high cholesterol and illnesses like cystic fibrosis that occur when proteins fail to reach their proper positions within a cell.

Ralf Pettersson, professor of molecular biology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, dramatized the importance of the signals Blobel discovered by displaying an aerial picture of New York City.

"Without an address, anybody who lands in this mash-mash of houses or streets would get lost," Pettersson said.

Blobel, a cellular and molecular biologist, discovered in the early 1970s that newly made proteins carry the signals. During the next 20 years, he illuminated the details of how the signals work.

Proteins are long, folded chainlike molecules made up of building blocks called amino acids. The signals Blobel found are particular sequences of amino acids found either at one end of a protein or within it.

Specific signals determine whether a protein will end up in a specific compartment of a cell, lodge in the cell wall or be exported from the cell. Blobel's work also solved the mystery of how proteins enter the tightly sealed compartments within a cell, the organelles.

Tweaking cells to churn out drugs

Blobel's research lead other scientists to develop the remarkable lab procedures in which cells are slightly altered to make then churn out drugs such as insulin, human growth hormone, and a substance used during chemotherapy that helps in the production of bone marrow.

Simplified cell diagram shows proteins with the 'signal sequence,' or address tag, discovered by Nobel Prize winner Guenter Blobel. The address tags direct new proteins to their correct places and allow them to cross compartment membranes.

Blobel earned a medical degree from Germany's Tubingen University, and moved to the United States in the 1960s,where he now heads the laboratory of cell biology at Rockefeller University.

Winners of the Nobel Prize in physics and chemistry are to be announced Tuesday, followed by economics Wednesday and the peace prize Friday.

King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden will present the literature, science and economic prizes, this year worth $960,000, on December 10, the anniversary of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel's death in 1896. The peace prize will be presented on the same day in Oslo.

The science awards tend to be for breakthroughs that often pave the way for major advances in fighting disease and poverty.

Three Americans won the Nobel Prize in medicine last year for discovering that the body uses nitric oxide gas to make blood vessels relax and widen -- a finding that helped lead to the development of Viagra and could also pay off in treatments for heart disease.

The discovery by Robert F. Furchgott, Louis J. Ignarro and Dr. Ferid Murad also triggered research that could lead to new treatments for cancer and septic shock.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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