News Archive

PRESS RELEASE
For immediate release
Contact: E. Magruder Passano, Jr.
Email: passanofoundation@verizon.net
January10, 2006

2006 Award Ceremony:

The 2006 Passano Foundation Award Ceremony will be held on Tuesday, April 26, 2006, at the Center Club in downtown Baltimore.

################

PRESS RELEASE
For immediate release
Contact: E. Magruder Passano, Jr.
Tel: 410.825.0995
Email: passanofoundation@verizon.net
December 17, 2004

2005 Award Ceremony:

The 2005 Passano Foundation Award Ceremony will be held on Tuesday, April 19, 2005, at the Center Club in downtown Baltimore.

####################

PRESS RELEASE
For immediate release
Contact: E. Magruder Passano, Jr.
Tel: 410.825.0995
Email: passano@worldnet.att.net
April 4, 2003

2003 Passano Award Recognizes Fire for
Discovering RNA-Interference

Andrew Fire, Ph.D., will receive the 2003 Passano Award for discovering a new fundamental mechanism of gene regulation known as RNA interference (RNAi). Dr. Fire played a major role in revealing that organisms from plants to humans utilize RNA duplexes to direct the destruction of of messenger RNAs containing a homologous nucleotide sequence. Introducing experimentally synthesized trigger RNAs into cells provides a method for inactivating specific genes that is being widely applied across the entire spectrum of biological and biomedical research.

Dr. Fire will deliver the 2003 Passano Foundation Lecture at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine beginning at 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday, May 7, in the Wood Basic Science Building Auditorium (725 North Wolfe Street). That night, he will be the guest of honor at a reception and dinner at the Center Club in Baltimore.

Since 1945, the Passano Foundation has been fulfilling its charter to further scientific research and to make an annual award recognizing outstanding research done in this country. The Foundation has as its sole purpose the encouragement of medical science and research, particularly activities of this nature that have broad impact and clinical application.

Twenty-one of the Passano award winners have gone on to win a Nobel Prize.

Foundation directors and colleagues applaud Dr. Fires accomplishments. RNAi is of wide interest to the biotechnology industry and its clinical applications are being intensively investigated. In addition, Dr. Fire has made seminal contributions to the technology that has made the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, a major model organism for biomedical research, and used these methods to advance our understanding of germ cell and muscle development. The single most important contribution to the field of functional genomics is Andy Fires discovery of RNAi, a method that specifically targets the action of any selected gene, notes Donald Brown, M.D., Director of the
Department of Embryology, Carnegie Institution of Washington.

The Passano Foundations $100,000 annual awards program also supports the Clinician Scientist research training program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and an American Heart Association supported researcher at the University of Maryland School of Medicine through annual Passano Physician Scientist Awards to young researchers in early stages of their careers. For 2003, the recipients are Francesco Saverio Celi, M.D., Joseph Mark Savitt, M.D., Ph.D., and Tao Wang, Ph.D.

Dr. Celi will study the activity of a mutant enzyme and its interaction with the beta-3-adrenergic stimulation, which could lead to the development of specific therapies aimed toward a reduction of the obesity, insulin resistance and the related cardiovascular risk. Dr. Savitt is exploring the use of embryonic germ cells that could be manipulated to replace the dopaminergic cells lost in Parkinsons disease. Dr. Wang has developed a strategy of using a human X chromosome-specific cDNA microarray to identify responsible genes for patients with mental retardation.

###