James Chen, a professor of microbiology at UT Southwestern Medical Center, has won a Lasker Award for his discovery of an enzyme involved in immune response.
UT Southwestern researcher James Chen won for his discovery of an enzyme connected to a myriad of medical conditions, including autoimmune disease.James Chen, a professor of molecular biology at UT Southwestern Medical Center, won the 2024 Lasker Award in Basic Medical Research.The immune system has a remarkable way of fighting foreign invaders. Antibodies circulating in the blood can latch on to bits of virus, and certain cells can gobble up bacteria.
This discovery led Chen and his colleagues in 2012 to discover an additional sensor, this time for DNA. It was far more curious to them “Back then, it was quite a surprise,” Chen said. “We know that there must be a sensor that detects DNA, so when we set out to do this, we thought it would be just a protein binding to DNA somehow. We didn’t expect it to be an enzyme.”When the enzyme, called cyclic GMP-AMP synthase , detects any type of DNA in the cell’s soupy interior — also known as the cytoplasm — it produces a molecule that activates the innate immune system, the body’s first line of defense to foreign threats.
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