Dr Tim Hunt, a Fellow of Clare College and a former University Lecturer in the Department of Biochemistry (1981-1990), was one of the three scientists who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine last week.
Dr Tim Hunt, a Fellow of Clare College and a former University Lecturer in the Department of Biochemistry (1981-1990), was one of the three scientists who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine last week.
Dr Tim Hunt, a Fellow of Clare College and a former University Lecturer in the Department of Biochemistry (1981-1990), was one of the three scientists who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine last week.
Dr Hunt, who is now a Principal Scientist at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF), shared the $1m award with Sir Paul Nurse, Director General of the ICRF, and with Leland Hartwell, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. They are the first British scientists to win the prize since 1993.
The three winners each made important discoveries in the process of cell division. The process is vital to human growth and development - building the single cell of a fertilised egg to the many billion cells that make up an adult human - but as an accidental mutation it can lead to cancer. It is hoped that by understanding the process scientists will be able to develop new ways of predicting, preventing or even reversing it.
Dr Hunt carried out much of the research which led to the prize whilst working in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. He approached the problem by looking at why red blood cells stopped making proteins when they were mature. He then compared them with sea urchin eggs which do the opposite: they have to start making proteins before they can divide. He found that they synthesised one protein very strongly - but this disappeared 10 minutes before the cells divided.
These discoveries were made on a summer research trip to the Woods Hole Marine Biological Lab. Dr Hunt communicated his findings in a letter to one of his Cambridge colleagues, writing:
"I have very little idea of what all this means, or what is going on, but I have a strong sense of being on to something quite important."
Commenting on this initial eureka moment last week, Dr Hunt said:
"I knew I had made a very important discovery right from that very first day. But it was a very long time before everything was worked out and it would be fair to say there are an awful lot of other people - much better scientists than me - who have made seminal contributions."
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