NOBEL LAUREATES 2015

Affiliation: Kitasato University, Tokyo, Japan

Prize Motivation: "for their discoveries concerning a novel therapy against infections caused by roundworm parasites"

Omura isolated new strains of Streptomyces bacteria and cultured them so that they could be analyzed for their impact against harmful microorganisms.

2. William C. Campbell

Affiliation: Drew University, Madison, NJ, USA

Prize Motivation: "for their discoveries concerning a novel therapy against infections caused by roundworm parasites"

Campbell showed that one of those cultures was "remarkably efficient" against parasites in animals. The bioactive agent was purified and modified to a compound that effectively killed parasitic larvae, leading to the discovery of new class of drugs.

3. Tu Youyou

Affiliation: China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Beijing, China

Prize Motivation: "for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against Malaria".

Tu isolated one active compound in wormwood, artemsinin, which appeared to battle malaria-friendly parasites.

Affiliation: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Durham, NC, USA, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, USA

Prize Motivation: "for mechanistic studies of DNA repair"

Modrich demonstrated how the cell corrects errors that occur when DNA is replicated during cell division. This mechanism, known as 'mismatch repair', reduces the error frequency during DNA replication by about a thousand fold.

5. Tomas Lindahl

Affiliation: Francis Crick Institute, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom, Clare Hall Laboratory, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom

Prize Motivation: "for mechanistic studies of DNA repair"

Lindahl demonstrated that DNA decays at a rate that ought to have made the development of life on Earth impossible.

6. Aziz Sancar

Affiliation: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Prize Motivation: "for mechanistic studies of DNA repair"

Sancar discovered the mechanisms used by cells to fix damage by ultraviolet radiation.