A cure for cancer? A remedy for aging? It's impossible to know exactly where Carol W. Greider's groundbreaking research on the structure of chromosome ends known as telomeres will ultimately lead, but either is a distinct possibility. No doubt that has much to do with why Ms. Greider of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences and two fellow American researchers will be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2009.
Winning such a prestigious award is not something to be taken lightly, and Baltimoreans should be proud that Ms. Greider, who grew up in Southern California and did much of her initial research in the field there and in Long Island, has chosen to call Johns Hopkins home since 1997.
One day it may be possible to manipulate telemeres in such a way as to inhibit the growth of cancer cells. Already, laboratory tests on mice and cultured human cells have shown some potential in this regard.
But if there is an immediate lesson to be learned from Ms. Greider's work, it is the importance of funding basic scientific research. As the Hopkins professor told interviewers Monday after the award was announced, her investigations were driven by "pure curiosity."
Ms. Greider was not looking for some moneymaking drug to patent. She and her colleagues were simply eager to learn how chromosomes were able to stay intact after dividing and decided to study a single-celled organism called Tetrahymena to find out.
This sort of basic research and investigation is critical, but the money to finance it is often difficult to come by. Private investors tend to back lucrative applied research, not efforts to broaden basic knowledge. That generally leaves it to the federal government.
Last week, President Barack Obama made a trip to Bethesda to announce that $5 billion in federal stimulus funds would go to the National Institutes of Health for research grants. It's part of the $100 billion in science and technology funding (only some of it basic research) made possible by the stimulus bill.
That's helpful but perhaps temporary. Historically, basic science funding has not even kept pace with inflation in this country. The U.S. spends trillions on health care, but investing in basic knowledge that could put us on the path to the next big discovery? Just a fraction of that.
Yet jobs and growth are more likely than ever to be fueled by the knowledge economy. It's a problem felt most keenly in Maryland because of the presence of NIH and major medical research outposts like Hopkins and the University of Maryland.
Ms. Greider is to be congratulated for achieving, at the still-tender age of 48, such world renown. But if others are to follow her shining example, the country's commitment to basic research - the investigation of fundamental principles that lead to great discoveries - must be broadened.
