A UNC researcher has won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Aziz Sancar was one of three recipients of the award from the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden, announced on Wednesday.
Sancar spoke with WCHL’s Blake Hodge about winning the award. Listen below:
Sancar is the Sarah Graham Kenan Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the UNC School of Medicine.
Sancar says in a news release from UNC that he got the call early Wednesday morning, “It was 5 a.m. so I was a bit incoherent. But I managed to thank him and told them it was an incredible honor.”
Sancar has been at UNC since 1982, according to the university. He was honored with the Nobel Prize for his work on mapping the cellular mechanisms that underlie DNA repair. Sancar says this work is already being used in cancer treatment.
Sancar shares the award with Paul Modrich of the Duke University School of Medicine and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Tomas Lindahl of the Francis Crick Institute and Clare Hall Laboratory in Great Britain.
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