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Three scientists who worked on how cells repair damaged DNA, helping create new cancer-busting treatments, have won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
Research from the scientists from Sweden, the United States and Turkey deepened understanding of DNA knowledge, which revolutionized cancer treatments with new drugs that prevent tumor cells from proliferating.
The trio of Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar found a range of molecular systems to monitor and repair DNA, to prevent genetic materials from disintegrating.
Their work mapped how cells repair deoxyribonucleic acid to prevent damaging errors from appearing in genetic information, Reuters reports, which in many forms of cancer, at least one of these repair systems is broken.
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"Their work has provided fundamental knowledge of how a living cell functions and is, for instance, used for the development of new cancer treatments," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.
"It's important for cancer prevention and cancer treatment. That is what I received it for," Sancar, who has U.S. and Turkish citizenship and is a professor at the University of North Carolina, told Reuters by telephone from his home.
The 969,000 chemistry prize is the third of this year's Nobels. Previous winners of the chemistry prize have included Ernest Rutherford, Marie Curie and Linus Pauling.
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