Nobel winners Gary Ruvkun and Victor Ambros discovered microRNA, which has been used to study cancer treatments, diabetes, and metabolism.

Gary Ruvkun, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and an investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital, has received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of microRNAs, a class of tiny RNA molecules that regulate the activities of genes in plants and animals, including humans.

The work by Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun is “proving to be fundamentally important for how organisms develop and function,” according to a panel that awarded the prize in Stockholm.