Nobel Prize in Chemistry Shared by Aziz Sancar

Mavi Boncuk | Nobel Prize in Chemistry Awarded to Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar [1] for DNA Studies. Prof. Sancar is the second Turkish Nobel laureate after Orhan Pamuk who is also an alumni of Istanbul University.

Dr. Lindahl, of the Francis Crick Institute in London, was honored for his discoveries on base excision repair — the cellular mechanism that repairs damaged DNA during the cell cycle. Dr. Modrich, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Duke University School of Medicine, was recognized for showing how cells correct errors that occur when DNA is replicated during cell division. Dr. Sancar, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was cited for mapping the mechanism cells use to repair ultraviolet damage to DNA.

[1] Aziz Sancar (b. 1946, Savur, Turkey-     )
Affiliation at the time of the award: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
Prize motivation: "for mechanistic studies of DNA repair" SOURCE

Aziz Sancar has mapped nucleotide excision repair, the mechanism that cells use to repair UV damage to DNA. People born with defects in this repair system will develop skin cancer if they are exposed to sunlight. The cell also utilises nucleotide excision repair to correct defects caused by mutagenic substances, among other things.

He obtained his primary and secondary education in Savur and Mardin, and then received an M.D. degree in 1969 from the Istanbul University School of Medicine. Sancar completed his M.D. in Istanbul University of Turkey and completed his Ph.D. degree in Molecular Biology on the photoreactivating enzyme of E. coli in 1977 at the University of Texas at Dallas in the laboratory of Dr. C. Stan Rupert, now Professor Emeritus.

After practicing medicine in Savur for two years he attended the University of Texas at Dallas Dr.Sancar conducted postdoctoral work at Yale university on molecular biology of DNA repair in the period 1977-1982. He joined the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UNC Chapel Hill in 1982 where he has been conducting research on DNA Repair, Cell Cycle and cancer treatment, and the Biological Clock. He has published 288 research articles and 33 book chapters. Prof. Sancar is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences USA, a Member of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Member of Turkish Academy of Sciences and the recipient of the Vehbi Koc Award from the Koc Foundation of Turkey in 2007. Aziz Sancar lives in Chapel Hill with his wife Gwen Sancar, also a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill. 

He is the co-founder of the Aziz and Gwen Sancar Foundation which is a non-profit organization to promote Turkish culture and to support Turkish students and in the United States.