His colleagues call him the advocate of basic research - Paul Modrich. On 16 May, the 70-year-old US-American biochemist will give a public lecture at TU Dresden about his decades of research in the field of endogenous repair systems in the cell. With his fundamental work on a molecular level, he made a significant contribution to the development of cancer treatment and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2015.

His father, a biology teacher at a local high school in New Mexico, encouraged Modrich during his school days to "learn about this DNA stuff". At that time James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins had just been awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the double helix structure found in DNA. Modrich’s interest had been aroused and since then, it has been lasting throughout his entire scientific career.

His basic idea was to find out, how DNA can repair itself, because as in all mechanisms in the cell, DNA replication is not error-free. In 1989, Modrich had succeeded in reconstructing the entire enzyme system outside of living cells and to decipher its functions in detail. He thereby decoded the so-called mismatch repair system (MMR), a mechanism of the cell, which can detect and repair mismatches in the base pairs that occurred during DNA replication. In the following years, Modrich was also able to prove that malfunctions in the MMR are the most common cause for hereditary colon cancer and play a significant role in the formation of neurodegenerative diseases and in 30% of sporadic tumours.

In 2015, Paul Modrich was awarded the Nobel Prize for this discovery. He shares the award with Thomas Lindahl and Aziz Sancar. “All three scientists have mapped, at a molecular level, how cells repair damaged DNA and safeguard the genetic information. Their work has provided fundamental knowledge of how a living cell functions and is, for instance, used for the development of new cancer treatments.” justifies Claes Gustafsson, member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, the decision.

„Mechanisms in DNA mismatch repair” is the title of the lecture, in which Paul Modrich will explain his work and its importance to Dresden’s public. It will take place on Tuesday, 16^th of May at 7 pm in the central lecture hall AUDIMAX of TU Dresden.

Please register at https://tu-dresden.de/mn/nobel

Media inquiries to:
Prof. Clemens Kirschbaum
Tel.: 0 351 463-3 75 12