Merck Korea (President/Representative Director: Juergen Koenig), the Korean affiliate of Germany-based Merck KGaA, announced the third winners of its "Merck Young Scientist Award for Bioscience." The award ceremony and lectures will be held on May 17 during the international conference of KSBMB (the Korean Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology).
"The purpose of this award is to select scientists with excellent research performance in the life science area, which is regarded as a future growth engine, and to encourage young and able scientists to focus on their research and bring along future star researchers who will play a pivotal role in the development of the field. In Korea, the award was established jointly with the Korean Society of Medical Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (KSMBMB) in 2009 which marks Merck's 20th anniversary of operations in Korea." " Koenig said.
In order to discover and encourage young and able talents, the Merck Young Scientist Award was first established in the USA in 2007 and is currently given out in countries such as Australia, Japan, Malaysia, and the Philippines etc. Merck Korea has decided to run and support the award jointly with Merck KGaA and KSBMB, and to continue the selection on an annual basis.
The first winner's paper details the the mechanisms of gastric cancer metastasis is urgent to cure gastric cancer mortality. Down-regulation and over-expression of galectin-3 by silencing with siRNA and lenti-vrius in gastric cancer cells resulted in decrease and increase of cell migration and invasion. Among of motility related molecules, the expression of fascin-1, as a actin bundle protein, was down-regulated by galectin-3 siRNA treatment. TCF-4 binding site in fascin-1 promoter, and galectin-3 silencing reduced the binding activity of β-catenin/TCF-4 on fascin-1 promoter and their nuclear localization of β-catenin/TCF-4/GSK-3β. It was also confirmed that the interaction with galectin-3 and β-catenin/TCF-4/GSK-3β. Furthermore, galectin-3 silencing also inhibited the interaction of galectin-3, GSK-3β, β-catenin and TCF-4 and the binding of β-catenin/TCF-4 with fascin-1 promoter. Nuclear-localization of GSK-3β and β-catenin was not detected when galectin-3 was silenced. Over-expression of galectin-3 mutated at its GSK-3β binding and phosphorylation motifs, in contrast to over-expression of wild galectin-3, did not increase fascin-1. In gastric cancer patients, the expression in both galectin-3 and fascin-1 were found higher level in cancer tissue than in normal tissue. Based on our finding that Galectin-3 increases cell motility by up-regulating fascin-1 expression, we conclude that galectin-3 can serve as potential target molecule in the prevention and/or therapy of gastric cancer metastasis.
"I would like to express my thanks to professors and co-researchers for their support and encouragement for my research. And I will strive to achieve further developments in the field of bioscience," Mr. Seok-Jun Kim commented after the ceremony. In addition, the second-place winner, Mr. Byung-Gil Lee in Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Korea University, said that he will do his best to be better scientist.
