Personal flavour to Lemberg Medal win

The 2002 ASBMB Lemberg Medal has special significance for its recipient, Prof Philip Board of the Australian National University.

Accepting the award at the ComBio conference in Sydney this week, Board told delegates that he had grown up knowing Prof Max ('Rudi') Lemberg, one of the pioneers of Australian biochemistry.

"There are no scientists in my family," Board said, "but my mother used to encourage me by saying, 'You might grow up to be like Rudi Lemberg'. The Lembergs used to live next door to my grandparents."

Board won the Lemberg Medal for his years of research into the glutathione transferase (GST) isoenzymes -- "the GST you have to have, because you're born with it," he explained.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, Board pioneered the biochemical genetic analysis of coagulation factor XIII deficiency, and developed techniques that allowed the characterisation of abnormal factor XIII deficiency, associated with poor wound healing.

Board was the first to identify specific deficiency-causing mutations, and through molecular and structural analysis of GST he discovered the common deficiency of GST1 that has since been associated with a range of diseases and responses to chemotherapy.

In the 1980s, Board's lab at the ANU successfully expressed recombinant GSTs by "the somewhat humble technique", he said, of starch gel electrophoresis, which opened the way for molecular analysis and characterisation of different classes of GST.

"GST deficiency is very frequent," Board said -- about 50 per cent of people would have the null allele.

In a survey of children, he said, those with the null allele would be more likely to survive chemotherapy treatment, but would be more likely to contract cancer in the first place.