NORTH DAKOTA: Nobel Winner Visits NDSU - (Research Could Have Application For Parkinson's Caused By Cell Death)

[Murray Charters <mcharters@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

NORTH DAKOTA: Nobel Winner Visits NDSU
Mike Nowatzki, The Forum
Published Thursday, May 13, 2004

Scientists have long known that human cells die, whether it's the hair 
follicles that lead to baldness or the retina
cells that cause macular degeneration and blindness.

However, it wasn't until a discovery by H. Robert Horvitz that scientists began 
to take serious interest in the idea
that cells are programmed to die, and that the "suicide" genes controlling that 
process could be used to fight disease.

Horvitz won the 2002 Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine for his work.

Tuesday, he shared his research with about 200 people during the Engebretson 
Symposium on pharmaceutical sciences in
Fargo. The North Dakota State University College of Pharmacy hosted the 
gathering of researchers and scientists, held
in conjunction with the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy and Mayo 
Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Horvitz, a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is 
only the second Nobel Prize winner to
address an NDSU college in the university's 114-year history, said Charles 
Peterson, dean of the College of Pharmacy.

In their research on cell death, Horvitz and his colleagues decided to study 
the nematode. The microscopic, parasitic
worms are known as agricultural pests and can also cause human diseases such as 
pinworm and river blindness.

The species Horvitz chose doesn't cause disease, but it does have the same 
basic physical features as animals. And with
only 816 cells in its entire body, it made for a good research subject.

Horvitz found that the nematode not only had genes that trigger cell death, but 
also genes that help cells survive, he
said in an interview Wednesday.

More importantly, those same genes exist in humans, he said. In fact, they're 
so similar, he implanted one of the human
genes in the worm and demonstrated that it could protect against cell death.

Now, Horvitz and other scientists are trying to apply that technology to human 
diseases caused by cell death, including
neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and Lou Gehrig's 
disease.

It's still an open debate as to whether those diseases are caused by programmed 
cell death, Horvitz said. But
scientists are more certain about others, such as retinal degeneration, he said.

The research also could have applications in fighting cancer. Drug companies 
are already testing the technology in
human trials, Horvitz said.

"I think there's enormous promise," he said. "I'm confident this research will 
lead to effective ways of fighting
diseases."

Fulbright award

Melvin Bolton, a doctoral student in plant pathology at NDSU, has been awarded 
a Fulbright Foreign Scholarship to
conduct research at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

Bolton's research focuses on the soybean disease white mold.

His overseas research will run from Sept. 1 to May 31, 2005.

This is Forum reporter Mike Nowatzki's last higher education column of the 
spring. It will return in the fall.

SOURCE: In-Forum, ND - May 12, 2004


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