The Associated Press State & Local Wire

  October 10, 2001, Wednesday, BC cycle

SECTION: International News; State and Regional
HEADLINE: Two Americans and a Japanese scientist win the Nobel Prize in
chemistry
BYLINE: By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: STOCKHOLM, Sweden

BODY:

   Two Americans and a Japanese scientist shared the Nobel Prize in
chemistry
Wednesday for research dating back three decades on controlling chemical
reactions - work used for making medicines including a now-standard
treatment
for Parkinson's disease.

   William S. Knowles of St. Louis and Ryoji Noyori of Nagoya University
in
Japan shared half of the $943,000 award. K. Barry Sharpless of the
Scripps
Research Institute in La Jolla won the other half.

   Their research deals with the fact that many molecules appear in two
forms
that are mirror images of each other, just like the left and right hands.

   Cells generally respond correctly to only one of these forms, while
the other
form might be harmful. Drugs often use such mirror-image molecules, and
the
difference between the two forms can be a matter of life and death.

   The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which chooses the winners,
singled out
as an example the drug thalidomide, used by pregnant women in the 1960s.
One
form of the drug helped control nausea, while its opposite form caused
birth
defects.

   Research by the Nobel winners has produced ways of making only the
proper
form of molecules, leading to antibiotics, anti-inflammatory drugs, ulcer
treatments, heart medications - even flavorings and sweeteners.

   "The discovery can move frontiers of research forward in medicine,
chemistry
and biology," Per Ahlberg, a member of the academy's Nobel Committee,
said at a
news conference in Stockholm, Sweden. "It's a breakthrough that started
33 years
ago but the development is incremental."

   Knowles' breakthrough came in 1968, when he working for the Monsanto
Co. in
St. Louis. He found a way to make L-dopa, which is used to treat
Parkinson's

 PAGE 2
            The Associated Press State & Local Wire October 10, 2001

disease, without producing its mirror image.

   "This was the first time this kind of a thing had been done," Knowles,
84,
told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "The field has since burgeoned
and the
other people who were with me in this thing have enlarged the field
enormously.
We started it and they pursued it."

   As for winning the Nobel prize, "I never even conceived that this was
possible - especially after all these years," he said.

   Noyori, 63, developed substances that encourage particular chemical
reactions, making it easier for companies to produce large amounts of
antibiotics and other drugs. He began his work in chemistry in the 1960s,
when
Japan was climbing back out of its postwar poverty.

   "Looking back the time I started my research - when this country was
still
poor - I have come a very long way," Noyori said at a news conference.
"At that
difficult time I discovered a bud and I have since kept nurturing it."

   Sharpless, 60, in 1980 did experiments that led to a method for
creating
beta-blockers, a widely used class of heart drugs.

   His research has been described by many scientists as "the most
important
discovery in the field of synthesis during the past few decades," the
academy
said.

   The economics prize was to be announced later Wednesday.

   The physics award went Tuesday to German scientist Wolfgang Ketterle
and
Americans Eric A. Cornell and Carl E. Wieman for creating a new state of
matter
that could lead to ways of producing faster electronics.

   On Monday, Leland H. Hartwell of the United States and Britons Tim
Hunt and
Paul Nurse won the medicine prize for work on cell development that could
lead
to new cancer treatments.

   The literature prize will be announced on Thursday and the peace prize
on
Friday.

   ---

   On the Net:

   Nobel site, http://www.nobel.se

   Noyori web site: http://www-noyori.os.chem.nagoya-u.ac.jp

   Sharpless web site: http://www.scripps.edu/chem/sharpless/kbs.html

LOAD-DATE: October 11, 2001


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