Oliver Smithies Wins Nobel Prize for Medicine

Biotechnology Center Helped Fund Recruitment

Oliver Smithies shares a laugh with reporters Oct. 8 during a news conference at UNC-Chapel Hill. Smithies is an Excellence Professor in the School of Medicine and a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Medicine for 2007.
Photo credit: Bernard Thomas, The Herald-Sun

Podcast of interview with Dr. Smithies

By Jim Shamp
News and Publications Editor

No one could know it would lead to the world's top research prize when the North Carolina Biotechnology Center rolled out the red carpet and lined it with nearly $900,000 in greenbacks to bring a group of high-profile researchers to the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill 20 years ago.

But the commitment turned to gold Oct.8 when Dr. Oliver Smithies and his wife, Nobuyo Maeda, were rousted from their slumber at their Chapel Hill home with a 4:50 a.m. phone call telling Smithies he’d won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. In a phone interview from his lab Wednesday – one of the constant stream of media interview requests and well-wishes from around the world – the 82-year-old Smithies confided that he hasn't been getting much sleep, but he's enjoying the experience immensely.

"It's not feeling much different today than it felt at the beginning," he said. "There's sort of a gentle sense of peace about it all. It sort of feels like, 'That's that. Now I can settle down and keep going with a nice base on which to proceed.' "

"Precisely Tweak Mouse Genes"

A nice base indeed. Smithies will share the Nobel with fellow American Mario R. Capecchi and British scientist Sir Martin Evans for their pioneering work developing the technology to precisely tweak mouse genes, enabling the animals to provide living models of human scourges such as heart disease, Alzheimer's, diabetes and cancer.

The technique, which has also been honed by Maeda in shoulder-to-shoulder collaboration with her husband, is now routinely used by genetics labs worldwide in millions of genetically modified mice – rodent recruits helping researchers understand disease processes and develop new therapies.

Smithies, a native of Halifax, West Yorkshire, England, studied at Oxford University before moving to the Connaught Medical Research Laboratories at the University of Toronto in 1953. After seven years there, he set up shop at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. That brought an increasingly close collaboration with Japan native Maeda. Then, in 1987, said Smithies, Maeda's research hit some roadblocks at Wisconsin.

The timing was right for UNC. Dr. Philip Carl submitted a request to the Biotechnology Center for $899,875 for a faculty recruitment grant to bring in Smithies, Maeda and five other promising researchers believed capable of building the university’s fledgling program in molecular biology and biotechnology. The Biotechnology Center's review board swallowed hard, approved the grant on May 15, 1987, and the rest, especially with this week's Nobel Prize picks, is truly history.

Smithies and his wife, Nobuyo Maeda, were two of seven researchers recruited to UNC to start its molecular biology and biotechnology program."We're delighted to see this worldwide recognition for the great bioscience coming out of Dr. Smithies’ lab – and out of the state of North Carolina," said Norris Tolson, president and CEO of the Biotechnology Center. "We are also very proud of the fact that the Biotechnology Center helped make it happen by providing major grant funding to enable UNC to bring him here 20 years ago. It was obviously money well spent."

Biotechnology Center Support

So far the Biotechnology Center's Faculty Recruitment Grants program has invested $9.6 million on behalf of state taxpayers, helping the state’s research universities to bring 51 world-class bioscientists to North Carolina – and nearly $363 million in follow-on funding, primarily from the National Institutes of Health.

The Smithies and Maeda lab, for example, has generated more than $23 million in NIH grants alone. The follow-on funding amounts to $37.90 from outside sources for every dollar provided overall by the Biotechnology Center program.

"I’ve been acutely aware of the Biotechnology Center’s support role," said Smithies, "and my wife and I value it very much. North Carolina can be extremely proud to have seen far enough ahead to set up Research Triangle Park and its associated institutions such as the Biotechnology Center. It’s the crown jewel, you might say. And I’m very much appreciative of the whole endeavor.

"Of course my wife is a wonderful scientist and professor in her own right," he added. "She’s also known all over the world now. In fact it was she who was first recruited to UNC, and I came along as an adjunct. Her accomplishments have been super. For example, she and a group in New York were responsible for developing one of the best animal models in mice for atherosclerosis. These mice, with diets of almost no cholesterol, still get plaques. Jackson Laboratory and labs all over world now put them in use."

Smithies said his experience reinforces his belief that it's important for the North Carolina bioscience community to pave the way for "trailing spouses" when recruiting a scientist whose spouse is also involved in research. "Very often when there are two scientists in the family, one or the other is the main attraction," he said. "But that doesn’t mean we shouldn't find the funds to recruit both. We won’t get the one if can’t get the both in a good family."

Unfortunately, Smithies' fraternal twin brother, Roger, didn't quite live long enough to share in his brother's achievement. A civil engineer living in London, he died last year. Their sister died of melanoma years ago.

Though he's vibrant, with a twinkling eye and quick wit, these major events have Smithies weighing questions of legacy as he prepares his acceptance speech for the December ceremonies in Stockholm.

"I’ve been debating, myself, as to whether I owe something else to science. I have maybe 120 lab notebooks that go back to my days as grad student. I think maybe somebody ought to look at them and go back over 60 years of science. I have to think about maybe giving up some of the bench work and doing that."

"I was pondering about it a little before this all happened. Some time ago when rumors began to circulate that I might be in line for a Nobel, the UNC library was interested in recording these lab notes and so forth. But it fell by the wayside. I didn't yet have that label that would be needed to do it, I guess. But now I have that label. I don't know of any other person in world who can give 60 years of science in 120 notebooks, all written by hand."

Smithies said he’s never regretted the choice to make North Carolina his research base and his home base. "I've been truly happy here. Otherwise I wouldn’t have stayed here all these years. This is just a marvelous place to be."

Asked what he’d say to fellow scientists being recruited to North Carolina, Smithies didn’t equivocate. "I'd tell them, 'Come here. You’ll see excellent biotechnology. Go to any of the leading universities in the state, and you'll find that this is a marvelous area of leading bioscience.' The post–doctorate percentage of the population is said to be higher than anyplace in the United States, including Silicon Valley or Massachusetts. People are nice, even among so-called rival universities, but we cooperate all the time. It’s just a good place to be a scientist."

Contact Jim Shamp at 919-549-8889.