Nobel win for Briton who spared 100s from using wheelchairs

A BRITISH scientist who helped create a drug which has spared hundreds of people from using wheelchairs won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry yesterday.

Sir Gregory Winter, 67, of Cambridge university, scooped the prestigious prize for pioneering methods which have led to the creation of a whole new class of drugs – now being used to treat breast cancer, multiple sclerosis and arthritis.

Called ‘monoclonal antibodies’, they include the rheumatoid arthritis drug Humira, which had the biggest sale worldwide of any drug last year at £14billion.

Sir Greg said he was staring at his computer wondering how he would ever finish multiple projects when the phone rang with what turned out to be the good news. He said he was already feeling ‘a bit rocky’ after ‘a college feast’ the night before when the caller from Sweden told him to expect a ‘ very important announcement.’

The line went dead and Sir Greg said he thought it might be the bank ‘ringing up and telling me I had some dodgy transac-

‘I was wondering if this was for real’

tion’. He added: ‘I felt a bit numb for a while, wondering whether this was real. I felt very lucky. There are an awful lot of brilliant scientists and there aren’t enough Nobel prizes to go around.’

Praising Sir Greg, Professor dan davies of Manchester university, said: ‘With this medicine, far fewer people with rheumatoid arthritis are forced to use a wheelchair.’

Other blockbuster drugs discovered thanks to Sir Greg’s pioneering techniques in include breast cancer drug Herceptin and Avastin, which is used to treat cancers and eye condition age-related macular degeneration. Sir Greg, Master of Trinity College Cambridge, shares the prize with two other winners based in the uS.

Sir Greg grew up in Ghana, where his father was a professor of French. As a schoolboy, he became infatuated with science, which ‘was like a drug addiction’, after the first scientist he ever met brought a giant live sea turtle into class, prompting him to dream of becoming the next david Attenborough.

Instead, he decided there ‘were just as exciting new frontiers’ with molecules.