October 09, 2007

Yesterday, the Nobel Prize Committee announced that two Americans and one British scientist won the 2007 Nobel Prize in medicine for developing a technique that researchers have used to study how genes effect health.

The technique, in a nutshell, allows researchers to delete or inactivate ("knockout") genes in mouse embryoes; once fully grown and bred, these "knockout mice" can give researchers powerful clues as to how specific genes affect diseases ranging from cancer to cystic fibrosis.

Companies studying drug development can also use knockout mice to locate promising targets for new drugs, or to examine how inactivating specific genes may produce unwanted side effects.

For more information on how knocking out genes can help drug development, see this article from Lexicon Genetics.

Posted by Paul Howard at October 9, 2007 01:59 PM

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