2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded to 2 professors from Massachusetts

Ambros was born in Hanover, New Hampshire and received his Ph.D. According to the Nobel website, he received his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he also did postdoctoral research and was a senior researcher at Harvard University. Ambros is now a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester.

Ruvkun, a native of Berkeley, California, received his Ph.D. He received his doctorate from Harvard University, was a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in 1985 became a principal investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

“Victor had a profound impact on our world-leading RNA community,” Michael F. Collins, chancellor of UMass Chan Medical School, said in a statement. “He is an integral member of a remarkable group of RNA researchers here who are collectively advancing the global understanding of biological mechanisms and advancing the field of biomedical sciences. The Nobel Prize confirms what the UMass Chan community already knows about Victor’s contributions to scientific discovery and innovation.”

MGH officials said research into the potential of microRNAs for diagnosing, prognosticating and treating diseases has expanded from the two original papers published in 1993 by Ruvkun and Ambros to 176,000 papers today.

“Current evidence suggests that most plant and animal genomes, including the human genome, contain more than 1,000 microRNAs that control many protein-coding messenger RNAs and may be involved in a variety of normal and disease-related activities,” said the MGH officials said in a statement. “Human microRNAs are involved in heart disease, viral pathogenesis, and the regulation of neuronal function and disease. Human therapies based on microRNAs are in clinical trials for heart disease, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and more.”

Marty Meehan, President of the University of Massachusetts, praised the two for their work.

“On behalf of the University of Massachusetts, I applaud Dr. Ambros and Dr. Ruvkun for this special award,” Meehan said in a statement. “UMass Chan is truly at the epicenter of a revolution in biomedical research. For the second time, our distinguished faculty have been recognized by the Nobel Assembly for breakthroughs that have transformed the global understanding of a fundamental biological process and have the potential to open new avenues for treating a wide range of human diseases.”

The previous UMass laureate was Craig C. Mello, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2006 with collaborator Andrew Fire.

Mello, a professor at UMass Chan Medical School, and Fire, who teaches at Stanford, also conducted groundbreaking RNA work and discovered “a phenomenon called RNA interference,” the Nobel website says. “In this phenomenon, double-stranded RNA blocks messenger RNA so that certain genetic information is not converted during protein formation. This silences these genes, making them inactive.”

Last year, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman for discoveries that enabled the development of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19, which were crucial to slowing the pandemic.

The Medicine Prize has been awarded 114 times to a total of 227 winners – the title is awarded to the winners. Only 13 women have won the prize, which comes with a cash prize of 11 million Swedish crowns ($1 million) from an estate of the prize's creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel.

Laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death.

The Nobel announcements continue with the Physics Prize on Tuesday, the Chemistry Prize on Wednesday and the Literature Prize on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the Economics Prize on October 14th.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. Travis Andersen from the Globe team contributed.

Emily Sweeney can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @emilysweeney and on Instagram @emilysweeney22.