Paul Nurse, a vocal supporter of BioMed Central, and Tim Hunt, a contributor to the "Faculty of 1000", have been awarded the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for their work on regulators of the cell cycle along with the eminent American scientist Leland Hartwell (http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20011008/04).
The cell cycle is a carefully regulated process involving the growth of a cell and the duplication of its genetic information for exact distribution into two daughter cells. When this process goes wrong it can result in uncontrolled cell division and the development of cancer. Nurse and Hunt have both made important discoveries relating to molecules involved in regulating the cell cycle which may be crucial to the development of future cancer treatments.
Paul Nurse, a founding member of the BioMed Central's Editorial Directorate, recently commented that:
"BioMed Central will be the most significant development for disseminating the results of biomedical research in our lifetime" BioMed Central's publishing model is based on providing free access to research articles and is now receiving much attention in the scientific community. High profile endorsements of BioMed Central have helped contribute to its phenomenal growth, demonstrated by the launch of 57 new journals covering all research areas in biology and medicine in the last eighteen months.
Tim Hunt is supporting another BioMed Central venture called Faculty of 1000 (http://www.facultyof1000.com) due to be launched in January 2002. As one of the section heads for cell growth and division in the cell biology faculty, Tim Hunt will be contributing research evaluations to this exciting new literature awareness tool.