The ASCC today congratulates US based Australian scientist Dr Elizabeth Blackburn for winning the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Dr Blackman was awarded it for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase. She was awarded the Nobel Prize along with long-time US collaborators Jack Szostak and Carol Greider.
Dr Blackburn is Australia's 11th Nobel laureate and the first Australian woman to receive the award. She continues the strong tradition of Australia’s success in science and medical research. Of our 11 Nobel laureates, six were awarded in the category of Physiology or Medicine, two in Physics, one in Chemistry and one in Literature.
Melbourne educated Dr Blackburn, who is based in San Francisco, pioneered the study of telomeres - caps that protect chromosomes in cells - and is a discoverer of telomerase, an enzyme that does the protecting. The work has direct implication for the understanding of growth and ageing, as well as the effects of diseases like cancers, which are linked to uncontrolled cell replication.
Dr Blackburn and her collaborators beat hot favourites, Canadian stem cell pioneers Ernest McCulloch and James Till to the Prize. McCulloch and Till were believed to be top contenders for their discovery of stem cells in the bone marrow in the 1960s.
But Dr Blackburn has a link to the stem cell research world of her own where she is regarded as somewhat of a hero. In 2004 she was appointed and then controversially removed, from then US president George W. Bush's bioethics advisory council because she objected to the practice of having religion rather than science guide its work, especially in the field of embryonic stem cell research, which was tightly restricted by the Bush administration.
President Bush then went on to appoint three new members to the Council including a doctor who had called for more religion in public life, a political scientist who had spoken out precisely against embryonic stem cell research, and another who has written about the immorality of abortion and the ‘threats of biotechnology’.
At the time, Dr Blackburn said "I don't feel martyred, I wear it as a badge of honour."
In the wake of her dismissal some 170 researchers signed an open letter to President Bush protesting Blackburn's treatment.
www.nobelprize.org