For ten years, every first Monday morning in October, a swarm of journalists lands in front of Michael Hall’s house in Basel, Switzerland. And he remains still until the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, around 11:30 am.
A ritual established since the highest scientific rewards rained down on this biologist, a specialist in cellular growth processes. Breakthrough Life Sciences Prize in 2014; Gairdner Award in 2015; Lasker Prize in 2017… This year too, the media will have waited in vain for the Nobel. And this Swiss-American researcher, with a penchant for self-deprecation, gleefully mocks it. But this is not enough to stop recognition: the Balzan Prize will be awarded to him on November 21 in Rome.
Tuesday September 17 the world He met him on the occasion of the presentation of the great medal awarded to him by the Academy of Sciences. At 71 years old, the man seems discreet. Don’t trust him: it is to his unwavering stubbornness that he owes his success.
“Michael Hall gave his nobility to cellular metabolism, this set of biochemical reactions that function in cells”explained the immunologist Alain Fischer, president of the Academy of Sciences, under the great figures of Corneille and Molière, Lavoisier and Coulomb.
“The Grail of Biology”
In fact, academics could not go wrong in rewarding the discoverer of the so-called molecules. Tor (target of rapamycin), of universal scope in the Lilliputian universe of cells with a nucleus. They equip all animal cells, from yeast to human and plant cells. And become towers to control cell growth. “If we eliminate TOR, no cell will be able to survive”underlines Michael Hall.
“ Discovering a gene with functions as essential as TOR is the Holy Grail of biologyunderlines Pierre Léopold, from the Curie Institute in Paris. In pathophysiology, there are very few stories like this. »
This saga begins like a story. “In 1965, on Easter Island, a team of Canadian microbiologists took soil samples.”Michael Hall narrates, quietly. Nobody knew it, but this land contained a treasure that will lead to TOR. It contained bacteria, Hygroscopic Streptomycesfrom which a molecule capable of blocking the proliferation of fungi was extracted in 1975. It will be named “rapamycin”, in reference to the indigenous name of this island, Rapa Nui.
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