Two Americans, one German win Nobel in medicine

Americans James Rothman and Randy Schekman and German-born researcher Thomas Suedhof won the 2013 Nobel Prize in medicine Monday for their discoveries in how hormones, enzymes and other key substances are transported within cells.

Their discovery of a traffic-control system has helped doctors diagnose a severe form of epilepsy and immune-deficiency diseases in children, Nobel committee secretary Goran Hansson said. 

"Ordinary people can benefit from this basic research into how cells work, which has unexpected and dramatic implications for their own lives," Schekman said. 

Rothman, 62, is a professor at Yale University. Schekman, 64, is at the University of California, Berkeley. Suedhof, 57, joined Stanford University in 2008.

The Nobel committee said the three researchers' findings on the transport system of cells helped scientists understand how "cargo is delivered to the right place at the right time" in cells. Vesicles are tiny bubbles that act as carriers.

Scientists hope the research could lead to medicines against more common types of epilepsy, diabetes and other metabolism deficiencies.

"Imagine hundreds of thousands of people who are traveling around hundreds of miles of streets. How are they going to find the right way? Where will the bus stop and open its doors so that people can get out?" said Hansson. "There are similar problems in the cell, to find the right way between the different organelles and out to the surface of the cell."

In the 1970s, Schekman discovered a set of genes that were required for vesicle transport, and Rothman revealed in the 1980s and 1990s how proteins and their target membranes dock like two sides of a zipper. Also in the '90s, Suedhof found out how vesicles release their cargo with precision.

"This is not an overnight thing. Most of it has been accomplished and developed over many years, if not decades," Rothman told the AP.

Last year's medicine award went to Britain's John Gurdon and Japan's Shinya Yamanaka for their contributions to stem-cell science.

The medicine prize kicked off this year's Nobel announcements. The awards in physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economics will be announced by other prize juries this week and next. Each prize is worth $1.2 million.

Established by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the prizes have been handed out by award committees in Stockholm and Oslo since 1901 (with the exception of economics memorial prize, which the Central Bank of Sweden established in 1968). The winners receive their awards on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896.

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