Leo Sher, M.D.

Today the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to American scientists Victor Ambros, Ph.D. and Gary Ruvkun, Ph.D. for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation. The Nobel committee described their research as a “groundbreaking discovery [that] revealed a completely new principle of gene regulation that turned out to be essential for multicellular organisms, including humans.”

In 1993, Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun discovered a short RNA, later named a microRNA. Their work helped explain how cells specialize and develop into different types, such as muscle and nerve cells, even though all the cells in an individual contain the same set of genes and instructions for growing and staying alive.

Victor Ambros was born in 1953 in Hanover, New Hampshire, USA. He is now Silverman Professor of Natural Science at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts. Gary Ruvkun was born in Berkeley, California, USA. He is now Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The winners of the prize for physiology or medicine are selected by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute medical university and receive a prize sum of 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million).