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INNOVACIÓ I TECNOLOGIA
A career moved by the desire to understand cancer
2001 Nobel Prize in Medicine
President and Director of Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
redacció COMB.cat
friday 3.24.2006
He is currently the President and Director of Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Hartwell is also a professor of genome sciences, professor of the American Cancer Society and an adjunct professor of medicine at the University of Washington.
Dr. Leland Hartwell has studied the cell for over 30 years. In the early 70's he identified more than 100 genes associated to the cell division process. One of the most important genes is known as CDC28 or Start which is responsible for initiating DNA cell reproduction. At the end of the 80's, he discovered the existence of control mechanisms in each cell division which he called checkpoints. These mechanisms allow the detection of errors during cell division and their correction. In the absence of checkpoints, the cells are more sensitive to genetic defects which originate in cancer cells.
In cancer research, what's the million-dollar question researchers are trying to answer?
Dr. Leland Hartwell: Different people would answer differently. For me the biggest payoff in cancer research would be the discovery of biomarkers that can be measured in the blood that reflect the presence of early stage cancer. For nearly all cancers, early detection means cure by standard treatments of surgery and radiation.
You've always focused your research on cancer. If you had to focus your research on another disease, which would it be?
LH: It's too late in my career to take up another disease. If I were just starting my career, I might study ageing.
Does a scientist who has won the Nobel Prize spend less time in the laboratory and more time attending scientific events?
LH: I no longer run a laboratory but I spend my time leading an institution and leading an international project to identify biomarkers for early detection of cancer.
Your discovery allowed people to better understand genome alterations present in cancer cells and it lead to new ways of treating cancer diseases. What improvements have been gained in treatment thanks to your discovery?
LH: Unfortunately, there have been few improvements in treatment. That is why I favor early detection. However, our insights into checkpoints and genetic instability in cancer are being pursued by several pharmaceutical companies following the ideas we started at Rosetta which is now incorporated into Merck. The idea is that cancer cells are genetically unstable because they have a defect in DNA repair and that they should be highly vulnerable to certain DNA damaging agents that require this form of repair.
Checkpoint defects generate genetic errors and these types of lesions are associated with cancer development. Are there treatments that can diminish these errors and that definitively lead to curing cancer?
LH: No, there are no ways to correct checkpoint defects, other than gene therapy. The trick is not to correct them in cancer but to take advantage of them. However, some people have inherited checkpoint defects and are therefore more susceptible to cancer. It would be useful to be able to correct their defect but there is no way at the present.
