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A Stanford University School of Medicine professor has won the 2006 Nobel prize for physiology or medicine. Andrew Fire, a professor of pathology and genetics, co-won the prize with a professor from the University of Massachusetts for discoveries in genetic-related work.

Fire was part of a team of researchers that discovered that certain RNA molecules could be used to turn off specific genes in animal cells. It marked the first time that scientists were able to "silence" the effect of genes. The practice, called RNA interference, has become a widespread research tool.

"I was very happy," Fire told Swedish Radio this morning minutes after being notified. "At first, of course, I couldn't believe it -- I could be dreaming or it could be a mistake or something like that -- but I guess it's not. And it's very nice."

Fire received a standing ovation this morning at a press conference at the Clark Center, a research building next to Stanford Hospital.

RNA interference is being used to test treatments of many diseases in animals, including HIV, cancer and hepatitis, and several clinical trials have also started in humans with macular degeneration and pneumonia.

Craig Mello of the University of Massachusetts shared the prize.

"This is an extraordinary achievement for Andy Fire and Craig Mello, for science and for Stanford," said Dr. Philip Pizzo, dean of the School of Medicine. "It serves as an affirmation of basic fundamental research that yields new insights into important biological mechanisms."

Fire and Mello first published their RNA findings in 1998, greatly changing how RNA was thought of by researchers.

Fire joined the Stanford faculty in 2003 after being a biology professor at Johns Hopkins University since 1989 where he also held a position at the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Department of Embryology in Baltimore.

Fire was born at Stanford Hospital and grew up in Sunnyvale. He received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1978. Ironically, he had been denied admission to Stanford as an undergraduate.

He received a doctorate in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983. He became a PhD student at the age of 19.

— Don Kazak