The Latest: Nobel laureate: I don't believe in eternal life
By Associated Press
Oct 7, 2015 6:54 AM CDT
A view of the screen showing the winners of the 2015 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, during a press conference, in Stockholm, Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2015. Sweden's Tomas Lindahl, American Paul Modrich and U.S.-Turkish scientist Aziz Sancar won the Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for "mechanistic studies...   (Associated Press)

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Latest developments in the announcements of the Nobel Prizes (all times local):

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1:50 p.m.

One of the winners of this year's Nobel Prize in chemistry says his work on how cells repair damaged DNA can be used to prevent serious diseases but says he doesn't believe in eternal life.

Tomas Lindahl says "no, I don't believe in eternal life, but a lot of DNA damage can result in cancer and serious diseases so we want to counteract that damage as much as possible and then we first have to understand the mechanism of how the damage is established."

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences member Peter Brzezinski adds he doesn't think "the goal is to prevent aging" but that the new information can lead to a "better life when we are old, simply just by understanding the diseases that are linked to aging."

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1:15 p.m.

Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences say the work of this year's three chemistry laureates has led to research on how to beat cancer by stopping the cancer cells from repairing their DNA.

The permanent secretary of the academy, Goran Hansson, says this is a hot field in cancer research at the moment.

Academy member Peter Brzezinski adds that at least one new cancer drug is being developed using such techniques.

Brzezinski says that while cancer cells have some errors, they are kept alive because some of their mechanisms to repair DNA are still working. So instead of focusing on repairing the damage to the cell that caused the cancer, researchers are now looking at ways to destroy the DNA repair mechanisms within the cancer cells to kill them.

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1:05 p.m.

Turkish-born scientist Aziz Sancar has become the second Turk to have won a Nobel Prize, after novelist Orhan Pamuk.

Sancar, 69, won the 2015 chemistry award, sharing it with Sweden's Tomas Lindahl and American Paul Modrich for "mechanistic studies of DNA repair." Pamuk won the prize for literature in 2006.

Sancar, who was born in Turkey's southern Mardin province, is a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

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12:40 p.m.

Nobel chemistry laureate Tomas Lindahl says he hopes winning the award will help encourage more research to be done in his native Sweden.

Lindahl, who is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said he was proud and thankful to have been trained at Sweden's Karolinska Institute, but points out his research has been an international venture, including collaborations with people from around the world.

The Permanent Secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Goran Hansson, added Lindahl was the first member of the academy to win a chemistry prize since 1948 and assured he had not participated in any of the meetings or preparatory work for this year's award.

Lindahl shared the award with American Paul Modrich and U.S.-Turkish scientist Aziz Sancar.

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12:35 p.m.

Tomas Lindahl, one of three scientists who won the 2015 Nobel Prize in chemistry for showing how cells repair damaged DNA, says "it was a surprise."

The Swede, who shared the award with American Paul Modrich and U.S.-Turkish scientist Aziz Sancar, says he got into DNA repair from studying properties of DNA, and was surprised to find that DNA "is much more labile than we usually recognize" and gets unavoidably damaged in cells.

Lindahl was speaking by phone on Wednesday at a Nobel news conference after the award was announced. The scientists' work has been used to develop new cancer treatments.

Lindahl said he hopes that in the long run the work will lead to better treatment and better drugs.

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11:50 a.m.

Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar have won the 2015 Nobel Prize in chemistry.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cited the researchers for work on "mechanistic studies of DNA repair."

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10:10 a.m.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences is set to announce the winner or winners of this year's Nobel Prize in chemistry at 0945 GMT (5:45 a.m. EDT).

It's the third award in the Nobel lineup; prize judges have already announced the winners of the medicine and physics awards.

Last year's chemistry prize went to Stefan Hell of Germany and Americans Eric Betzig and William Moerner for finding ways to make microscopes more powerful than previously thought possible.

The Nobel announcements continue with literature on Thursday, the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday and the economics award on Monday.

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A previous version of this story corrected the headlines to show that it's the chemistry prize, not physics prize.