Indian may have missed Nobel by a whisker
Press Trust of India [http://www.expressindia.com/news/fullstory.php?newsid=37290]
Posted online: Friday, October 15, 2004 at 1528 hours IST
New Delhi, October 15: Krishnamoorthy Kannan, a protein chemist at the Guru Gobind Singh Inderprastha University in Delhi, may have missed his share of this year's Nobel Prize in chemistry by a whisker because of government's failure to recognise a discovery he made 12 years ago.
This year's chemistry prize was shared by two Israelis and an American for their discovery of the function of a molecule called "ubiquitin".
They showed that ubiquitin gives the "kiss of death" to unwanted proteins inside the cells by marking them out for destruction thereby defending the body from certain types of cancer.
While the trio were the first to demonstrate the role of this molecule "inside" the cells, Kannan was the first to identify an equally important function of ubiquitin "outside" the cells. He was then working at Span Diagnostic Research Centre, a little known laboratory at Udhna, in Surat
Press Trust of India [http://www.expressindia.com/news/fullstory.php?newsid=37290]
Posted online: Friday, October 15, 2004 at 1528 hours IST
New Delhi, October 15: Krishnamoorthy Kannan, a protein chemist at the Guru Gobind Singh Inderprastha University in Delhi, may have missed his share of this year's Nobel Prize in chemistry by a whisker because of government's failure to recognise a discovery he made 12 years ago.
This year's chemistry prize was shared by two Israelis and an American for their discovery of the function of a molecule called "ubiquitin".
They showed that ubiquitin gives the "kiss of death" to unwanted proteins inside the cells by marking them out for destruction thereby defending the body from certain types of cancer.
While the trio were the first to demonstrate the role of this molecule "inside" the cells, Kannan was the first to identify an equally important function of ubiquitin "outside" the cells. He was then working at Span Diagnostic Research Centre, a little known laboratory at Udhna, in Surat
In a seminal paper published in 1993 in the British Journal of Hematology, Kannan and his student K.S. Parakh showed for the first time that ubiquitin homes in and binds to the so-called "haemopoetic" stem cells - the mother of all cells that make up the blood.
By staining it with a dye, he showed he could use ubiquitin as a probe to seek out stem cells and separate them outside the body -- a discovery that opened exciting possibilities for treatment of leukaemia and even aids.
The experiments were extremely tough performed as they were in ill-equipped laboratories. "I feel happy that sitting in India we could establish the first extra-cellular function for ubiquitin as well as stain the progenitor stem cells without using antibody specifically," said Kannan.
But working in a low profile laboratory, Kannan's efforts to get funding to continue the work failed. "We applied for a grant from the department of biotechnology but I was upset when it was turned down [.by Indian Govt.] ," he said. "I feel more upset now when work on the function of ubiquitin was selected for Nobel Prize."
Though ubiquitin's intracellular role got the Nobel recognition, Kannan -- who was general manager of research at Ranbaxy Laboratory before setting up the School of Biotechnology at the Indraprastha University -- said that ubiquitin has a bigger role outside the cell than inside the cell. Kannan's only regret is that he was unable to carry on his work due to lack of funds.
But Kannan's interest in ubiquitin never died. Next month he and his student Anjana Nityanandam will be presenting at Goettingen University in Germany their work on ubiquitin as a novel tool to study early stages of brain development.
"Our work on chick embryo shows it is quite possible that extra-cellular ubiquitin actually gets to interact with neural stem cells just as it was shown to do in the case of haemopoetic stem cells," he said. "If this is so, ubiquitin might find use as a marker in studies related to neural stem cell
By staining it with a dye, he showed he could use ubiquitin as a probe to seek out stem cells and separate them outside the body -- a discovery that opened exciting possibilities for treatment of leukaemia and even aids.
The experiments were extremely tough performed as they were in ill-equipped laboratories. "I feel happy that sitting in India we could establish the first extra-cellular function for ubiquitin as well as stain the progenitor stem cells without using antibody specifically," said Kannan.
But working in a low profile laboratory, Kannan's efforts to get funding to continue the work failed. "We applied for a grant from the department of biotechnology but I was upset when it was turned down [.by Indian Govt.] ," he said. "I feel more upset now when work on the function of ubiquitin was selected for Nobel Prize."
Though ubiquitin's intracellular role got the Nobel recognition, Kannan -- who was general manager of research at Ranbaxy Laboratory before setting up the School of Biotechnology at the Indraprastha University -- said that ubiquitin has a bigger role outside the cell than inside the cell. Kannan's only regret is that he was unable to carry on his work due to lack of funds.
But Kannan's interest in ubiquitin never died. Next month he and his student Anjana Nityanandam will be presenting at Goettingen University in Germany their work on ubiquitin as a novel tool to study early stages of brain development.
"Our work on chick embryo shows it is quite possible that extra-cellular ubiquitin actually gets to interact with neural stem cells just as it was shown to do in the case of haemopoetic stem cells," he said. "If this is so, ubiquitin might find use as a marker in studies related to neural stem cell
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