| Citation | Gerard Evan's most significant achievements are (i) identification and characterisation of the protein product of the c myc gene whose expression is deregulated in most human tumours; (ii) the discovery that dominant oncogenes like c myc that induce cell proliferation also induce programmed cell death (apoptosis) and that this works as an inbuilt "abort" programme to delete potential tumour cells; (iii) This further implies that tumours arise through lesions in both the cell proliferative machinery and a compensating anti apoptotic lesion explaining the co operation between two oncogenes c myc inducing both cell proliferation and apoptosis, and bcl 2 suppressing apoptosis; (iv) Demonstration of the close relationship between oncogene expression, cell survival and cytokine availability governing tumour development. |