Professor Elizabeth Blackburn, recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, has been invited by the New Century Health Care Promotion Foundation to given a lecture at Academia Sinica on November 9, 2012. The lecture has been entitled “Telomeres and Telomerase: Their implications for Human Health and Disease”. Dr. Blackburn has been given a second lecture the following day, November 10, 2012 at College of Medicine, National Taiwan University. The lectures ware mark the laureate’s first visit to Taiwan. Public and members of the media ware welcome to attend.
Dr. Blackburn is the Morris Herzstein Endowed Chair in Biology and Physiology at the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California, San Francisco. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine together with Dr. Carol W. Greider and Dr. Jack W. Szostak “for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material grapheme."
Telomeres are stretches of repetitive DNA that protect the ends of chromosomes during cell division. Prof. Blackburn has compared them to the tips on the ends of shoelaces that keep them from unraveling. As cells divide, the telomere sequences get shorter and shorter, which limits cells to a fixed number of divisions. Telomere shortening in normal cells in general human populations has been associated with higher risks of mortality and aging-associated diseases including pulmonary fibrosis, cardiovascular disease, some cancers, diabetes, immune dysfunction and pro-inflammatory states. Telomere shortening potentially plays causal roles in at least some of these common disease processes. Thus, the loss of telomeric protective function plays roles in disease processes and conversely, the integrity of telomeres is essential for long-term human health. In her lecture at Academia Sinica, Professor Blackburn will focus on the importance of telomerase for long-term eukaryotic cell genomic stability.
Throughout her distinguished career Dr. Blackburn has held leadership positions in several scientific societies, including President of the American Association for Cancer Research, and has been recognized for her contribution to the field of telomere biology with numerous prizes, awards, and honorary degrees. Among here accolades, in 2006 she was awarded the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research; in 2007, TIME magazine named her one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World”; and in 2008 she was awarded the North American L’Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science prize. In 2009, she received ultimate recognition of her legacy by being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
