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.

Gary B. Ruvkun, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine, the Nobel Committee announced early Monday morning.

Two scientists from Massachusetts are this year’s winners of the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. Victor Ambros of UMass Medical School and Gary Ruvkun of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital won for their discovery of microRNA — tiny bits of genetic material that serve as on and off switches that help control what cells do.

Two scientists have been award the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of microRNA. Victor Ambros, professor of molecular medicine at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School,

A pair of Massachusetts professors won a Nobel Prize for discovering microRNA, which could lead to new ways of treating cancer.

In the late 1980s, Ambros and Ruvkun were postdoctoral researchers in the laboratory of Robert Horvitz, who received the Nobel Prize in 2002 with Sydney Brenner and John Sulston. In Horvitz's laboratory, they studied the relatively inconspicuous, 1-mm long roundworm C elegans.

Victor Ambros, a New Hampshire native who was a professor at Dartmouth Medical School from 1992-2007, is one of two Americans to be awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday.

The prize was awarded Monday for the discovery of microRNA, which play an important role in gene regulation and how organisms develop and function.