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Biochemist in Zurich finds winning form

Advances in molecular medicine will depend on our understanding of the structure of chromosomes. Timothy Richmond

A molecular biochemist at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich is one of this year's winners of the Louis-Jeantet prize for medicine.

The prize, which is awarded annually, fosters innovative biomedical research in Europe.

Professor Timothy Richmond has spent 20 years studying the structure of chromosomes and how their form has an impact on gene activity. He uses molecular biology and X-ray crystallography to reveal how DNA is packed in chromosomes.

“It goes beyond genome sequences,” said Richmond, who is originally from the United States. “It uses not so much the genetic code as the structural code which is built into the DNA, the recognition of the three-dimensional structure by various proteins, the way the DNA really looks in the cell and how all these things fit together.”

Twenty-year journey

Understanding the basic principles of how DNA is packed in chromosomes has been a long quest.

“To this stage, it has taken 20 years,” Richmond told swissinfo. “The next level and the level which is extremely important for the expression of genes, the regulation of genetic matter, the turning on and off of genes is to examine chromatin fibre.”

Richmond and his team are conducting basic research but advances in molecular medicine will ultimately have dramatic ramifications for treatment of human disease.

“It is hard in our case to pinpoint applications,” said Richmond. “What we attempt to do is to show exactly what the three dimensional structures of very large molecules look like and hope that we and others can then relate the form of these molecules to their function.”

“From there one could attempt to make applications. One example with smaller structures like protein structures is to use them for rational drug design.”

Richmond, who has been in Europe since 1978, moved to the Federal Institute of Technology in 1987.

Commitment

“I liked the long-term commitment that one could have from the school here for working on these difficult problems,” he said. “At that time, it wasn’t particularly easy to find a place where you could be secure to do your work for the length of time that it took to get this structure to high resolution.”

The Louis-Jeantet Foundation awards a cumulative sum of €1.2 million (SFr1.8 million) to three prize winners to carry out their new research projects. In addition each prize winner receives a personal award of €75,000 (SFr 110,000).

The other winners for 2002 are Richard Treisman, director of laboratory research at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London, who is exploring how serum stimulates cell proliferation, and Karl Tryggvason, professor of medical chemistry at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm who is examining kidney diseases.

The prize-giving ceremony is due to take place on April 19 in Geneva.

by Vincent Landon

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