Y.W. Kan Wins Major Swiss Research Award.

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 25, 1995--On September 29, Yuet Wai Kan, M.D., a UC San Francisco geneticist and hematologist, will receive the Helmut Horten Research Award, one of the largest biomedical research prizes in the world.

The award is given in recognition of "outstanding performance in the fields of biology and/or medicine which directly promote human health."

Kan was recognized for his research on the blood disease thalassemia, which is prevalent in the Mediterranean region and in Southeast Asia, and for his contributions to the use of molecular biology in the genetic analysis of human diseases, according to the Swiss-based Helmut Horten Foundation.

Kan will share the prize, valued at 1 million Swiss francs (about $800,000), with two other researchers: Stuart H. Orkin, M.D., of Harvard Medical School, and Sir David J. Weatherall of Oxford University in Great Britain. All three are internationally renowned hematologists and geneticists who have devoted much of their research to thalassemia.

The newly created biannual prize has been given only three times. In 1993, it was awarded jointly to UCSF's Herbert Boyer, Ph.D., and Stanford University's Stanley Cohen, M.D., who co-discovered the techniques of recombinant DNA that led to the revolution in biotechnology.

In 1975, Kan discovered that alpha thalassemia, one form of the inherited blood disease, was caused by the absence of the gene for alpha globin, a major component of hemoglobin. It was the first time the deletion of a gene was identified as causing human disease. Kan applied this discovery to the development of a DNA test that was used successfully in 1976 to diagnose alpha thalassemia in an unborn fetus. This innovation heralded the beginning of DNA testing for human diseases.

In 1979, Kan and his colleagues also identified a specific gene mutation involving a single nucleotide which gives rise to beta thalassemia. This was the first molecular delineation of the beta thalassemic syndrome. Subsequent work by Kan and others led to the development of prenatal DNA tests for beta thalassemia and a dramatic reduction in the incidence of this disease in the Mediterranean region.

Kan also originated a DNA technique, now known as restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP), which can be used to diagnose genetic diseases where the gene has not been identified or precisely located. This technique has become indispensable not only for genetic screening but also for the international effort to map all genes under the Human Genome Project.

Kan's recent research is directed at understanding the factors which control hemoglobin production. This knowledge may lead to new approaches to the treatment of thalassemia and sickle cell anemia. In addition, he is investigating novel methods for correcting the genetic defects in these diseases through gene therapy.

One strategy he recently devised may allow gene therapy to be administered by injection to the patient, rather than the tedious and expensive process now commonly used of removing the patient's cells, inserting the genes and then putting them back into the patient. Kan is the director of two NIH-funded projects at UCSF in gene therapy for cystic fibrosis and sickle cell disease.

Kan is the Louis K. Diamond Professor of Hematology at UCSF, a UCSF professor of laboratory medicine and medicine and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. The Helmut Horten prizes are awarded in memory of Helmut Horten, the founder of a German department store chain who died in 1987. Today, the foundation is one of the largest non-profit foundations in Switzerland with assets of 60 million Swiss francs.

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Note to Editors: Photos available.

CONTACT: University of California, San Francisco 

Ruthann Richter, 415/476-3804