CEHS Researcher Wins Coveted Nobel Prize for Chemistry

The UNC Center for Environmental Health and Susceptibility (CEHS) congratulates its longtime member and collaborator Dr. Aziz Sancar for winning the 2015 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. In announcing the prize, the Nobel Committee cited Dr. Sancar’s groundbreaking work revealing the mechanisms of nucleotide excision repair.  Throughout his 33-year career at UNC-Chapel Hill, Dr. Sancar’s work has involved mapping the cellular mechanisms that drive DNA repair, which occurs every minute of the day in response to outside forces, such as ultraviolet (UV) radiation and other environmental factors. Nucleotide excision repair is vital to protecting against UV damage to DNA. When this repair system is defective, people exposed to sunlight develop skin cancer. Ultimately, this new knowledge about DNA repair could be used in the development of cancer treatments.

Dr. Sancar, the Sarah Graham Kenan Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UNC-Chapel Hill, has been a member of the UNC CEHS since its inception in 2001.  Over this period, he collaborated with several CEHS investigators to research environmental cancers. CEHS collaborators have included Dr. Norman Sharpless, Professor of Medicine and Genetics and director of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, and CEHS Interdisciplinary Research Director Dr. William Kaufmann. Kaufmann and Sancar collaborated in an NIEHS-sponsored project aimed at understanding the connection between the BRAF gene mutation, mole growth, and childhood sunburns as an influence upon melanoma risk. Another testament to Dr. Sancar’s influence upon environmental health research at UNC is his leadership role among trainees and other CEHS associates who have built on his research of DNA damage repair and disease susceptibility to lead numerous other interdisciplinary studies.

Dr. Sancar will be honored with the other Nobel Laureates on December 10 in Stockholm, Sweden. He will share the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Tomas Lindahl in the Francis Crick Institute and Clare Hall Laboratory, Hertfordshire, UK and Paul Modrich in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC.

Information sources:
www.nobelprize.org
www.unc.edu/spotlight/a-nobel-week/