U. scientist Capecchi wins Nobel Prize

University of Utah scientist Mario R. Capecchi has won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Medicine, an honor he shares with two other scientists for work manipulating mouse genes to study disease.

Capecchi, 70, pioneered a technique to "knock-out" specific mice genes.

Capecchi, distinguished professor of human genetics and biology at the U.'s Eccles Institute of Human Genetics and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, shares the award with Oliver Smithies of the University of North Carolina and Sir Martin Evans at the University of Cardiff in Wales.

A visibly moved Capecchi waved the audience to sit down after they gave him a second standing ovation at a news conference the U. called in his honor Monday morning. "You'll embarrass me," he smiled.

He said his wife, Laurie Fraser, nearly didn't answer the phone when it rang at 3 a.m. because the ring sounded funny. He would have missed the call from the secretary of the Nobel Committee. "He had a very serious voice, so I took it seriously," he joked.

"This is one of the proudest days in the history of the University of Utah," said Dr. Lorris A. Betz, vice president over the health sciences. "It is the ultimate honor in medicine."

"Gene targeting truly changed the course of medical research," said U. President Michael K. Young. "It has brought hope ... to millions of people worldwide."

The award is just one more example, Young said, of Capecchi's "life that reflects passion to do good in the world."

That passion to do good is perhaps more striking because Capecchi's childhood came at a time when much was bad in the world. He was born Oct. 6, 1937, in Verona, Italy, the son of an American-born, "quite remarkable" poet, Lucy Ramberg, and an Italian airman.

An instructor at the Sorbonne, Ramberg had joined a group of literary elite called the Bohemians "who thought they could wipe out fascism and Nazism with a pen." They wrote and distributed pamphlets, and Adolf Hitler's forces started rounding them up to send to concentration camps.

She sold her belongings and gave the money to a neighbor so he could take care of Mario, who was a toddler. She was shipped to Dachau. The money lasted for a year and, at age 4 1/2, the boy was turned free to survive however he could.