Nobel Prize Winner In Chemistry Named; Aziz Sancar Celebrated As Alumnus Of University Of Texas!

Aziz Sancar is the newest Nobel Prize winner in chemistry. The University of Texas at Dallas is proud of his achievement and can finally say they have a Nobel Prize winner in its ranks.

Aziz Sancar is a 1977 molecular and cell biology graduate from UTD. Today he is now a biochemist at the University of North Carolina. He is now 69 years old. He won the Nobel Prize in chemistry last week along with two other scientists who are Tomas Lindahl and Paul Modrich.

Sancar won because their work that can be used to advance cancer treatment research. Their work is all about the nucleotide excision repair. This mechanism is used by cells to repair the damage to DNA from the harmful effects of the sun or specifically from ultraviolet radiation according to The Daily Texan.

"DNA repair is basically what keeps us alive," Sancar said. "We're continuously bombarded with all kinds of agents that destroy DNA, but the major ones are sunlight, which causes skin cancer, and more importantly cigarette smoke and industrial pollution, which causes lung cancer."

Cancer drugs usually just kill cancer cells by manipulating their DNA. With Sancar and his research team's data, other scientists might be able to develop treatments that can improve on DNA repair. This will result to better cancer drugs, a report on The Dallas Morning News says.

The achievement that Aziz Sancar has gained gives University of Texas - Dallas a great milestone for it. UTD is still young and is still growing to make itself known to the whole world.

"To have what we regard as our true origins of high quality verified by this prize is very fulfilling for us, and we expect it's going to be wonderful for us raising our reputation even higher," said Hobson Wildenthal, UTD president ad interim. "For the general public that is not closely connected to UTD, this will reach out to them in a way we otherwise could not do."