Nordic Life Science 1
PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE // INTERVIEW IN T E R V IE
W VICTOR AMBROS Victor Ambros, Professor of Molecular Medicine and the Silverman Chair in Natural Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, is one of this year’s winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. T E X T B Y EL L EN R . DEL I S I O C ELLS MAY BE microscopic but they have a lot of moving parts, and learning what guide them to develop the way they do has not been easy. That process became clearer with the discovery of microRNA by Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun, the two Nobel Prize laureates in Physiology or Medicine 2024. “Their surprising discovery revealed an entirely new dimension to gene regulation. MicroRNAs are proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function,” stated the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences after the announcement. Victor Ambros, made the discovery of microRNA while studying mutations in the roundworm C. elegans 30 years ago at his lab at Harvard University. He and Ruvkun met as postdoctoral fellows at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and exchanged information after they went on to do parallel work in separate labs. A very active field Victor Ambros’ fascination with cell processes goes back to his undergraduate days at MIT, he says to NLS. “I got interested in biology, and I was doing work in labs, taking recordings from the brains of frogs and salamanders, and had a chance to publish some papers,” he says. “I had some great mentors, and the more I thought about it [cellular processes] the more mysterious it got. I liked the fact that I could use genetics to learn more about these processes and the effects of these processes inside cells.” “The more we learned, the more we realized that cellular processes are very complex and nuanced,” he says. “This is a very active field and it is very exciting when people are discovering new aspects of gene regulating mechanisms.” Detailed molecular mechanisms This discovery and understanding of microRNA’s role has opened new opportunities for diagnosing and treating metabolic disorders and other diseases. “There has been a lot of studies about the microRNAs that can be detected in body fluids, such as blood plasma,” says Ambros. “When we find microRNAs released into circulation, that can reflect that cells are being stressed or being replaced somewhere in the body. For example, liver damage from acetaminophen can be indicated by microRNAs in circulation that usually are only expressed in the liver. NORDICLIFESCIENCE.ORG | 43