UMass Medical prof wins key science award
A professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School is one of six biomedical researchers to be awarded with a Breakthrough Prize in life sciences for his co-discovery in genetics, the Worcester school announced Monday.
Victor R. Ambros, a professor of molecular medicine, was honored with his long-time collaborator, Gary Ruvkun, a genetics professor at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. The pair had discovered a new world of genetic regulation by microRNAs, a class of tiny RNA molecules that inhibit translation or destabilize complementary mRNA targets, according to a statement from UMass Medical.
Ambros, co-director of the RNA Therapeutics Institute, will receive a $3 million prize, the school said.
The Breakthrough prizes are awarded for accomplishments in life sciences, physics and mathematics. They were founded by Sergey Brin, a Google co-founder, along with Anne Wojcicki, Jack Ma and Cathy Zhang, Yuri and Julia Milner, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan.
The also prizes aim to celebrate scientists and generate excitement about the pursuit of science as a career.
The discovery of microRNAs, also known as miRNA, and their function dates back to the 1980s when Ambros and Ruvkun were postdoctoral fellows at MIT, the school said.
Ambros completed his undergraduate and graduate degrees, as well as his postdoctoral research, at MIT. After completing his postdoctoral fellowship, he joined the faculty at Harvard University in 1984 and remained there until 1992, when he accepted a faculty position at Dartmouth College. He arrived at UMass Medical School in 2007. Ambros has maintained a very close collaborative relationship with Ruvkun through the years, though the two have not worked in the same laboratory since the early 1980s, according to the UMass Medical statement.
Ambros continues his research on microRNA function and gene regulation during development, and is focused on understanding the genetic and molecular mechanisms that control cell division, differentiation and morphogenesis in animals.
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