The Alliance for mRNA Medicines applauds US scientists Victor Ambros, the Silverman Professor of Natural Science at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA and Gary Ruvkun, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, who were recently announced as the winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation.
As the Nobel Committee stated “Their groundbreaking discovery revealed a completely new principle of gene regulation that turned out to be essential for multicellular organisms, including humans. It is now known that the human genome codes for over one thousand microRNAs. Their surprising discovery revealed an entirely new dimension to gene regulation. MicroRNAs are proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function.”
AMM Board Member, Dr. Jeff Coller, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of RNA Biology and Therapeutics at Johns Hopkins University commented “MicroRNA may be small, but Ambros and Ruvkun are giants. Their discovery revolutionized our understanding of mRNA biology and ushered in a new paradigm for how we view gene regulation.”