Mario Capecchi, Former WWII Street Urchin, Wins Nobel Prize

By Anastacia Mott Austin

As if winning the Nobel Prize wasn’t enough, molecular geneticist Mario Cappechi is receiving almost as much attention for his unusual childhood.

On October 8th, the 2007 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was awarded to three scientists, "for their discoveries of principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells," according to the Nobel Prize website.

Now a professor at the University of Utah, Capecchi’s work involved targeting specific genes in mice and manipulating them to control the process of gene mutation, something that was initially considered "not worthy of pursuit" by NIH – The National Institutes of Health.

Luckily for 21st-century science, Capecchi didn’t take no for an answer and continued with his research anyway. Capecchi was accustomed to facing down adversity, after a grueling childhood spent roaming the streets of Italy.

Born in Verona, Capecchi was just three years old when his mother was arrested by the Gestapo for distributing anti-Nazi information. She was sent to Dachau’s concentration camp in 1941. Anticipating the arrest, his mother had sold all of their possessions and given the money to a neighbor family to take care of her son. Capecchi’s father was fighting in the Italian army during the war, and would later be killed in the line of duty.

The neighbor family cared for the boy for a year, and then the money ran out. At four years old, Capecchi was put out onto the streets of Italy to fend for himself.

How does a four-year-old make it on his own? "I won't tell you how I survived, but I broke a few rules," said Capecchi to reporters, adding, "I headed south, sometimes living in the streets, sometimes joining gangs of other homeless children, sometimes living in orphanages and most of the time hungry."

After more than four years of scavenging and fighting to survive during the war, Capecchi was ill and near starvation at a hospital in Italy. On his ninth birthday, his mother, who survived the concentration camp, found him there after searching for him for over a year.

Once reunited, the mother and son contacted relatives in the United States who helped them come to America, where they lived on a commune. Capecchi’s benefactor, an uncle, was a physicist, which initiated his interest in science.

Capecchi eventually attended Harvard University and studied under James Watson, a co-discoverer of DNA structure.

Using what he had learned, as well as technologies developed by the other prize-winning geneticists, Oliver Smithies of the University of North Carolina, and Sir Martin J. Evans, of Wales, Capecchi was able manipulate genes to duplicate human diseases in mice. This would allow scientists to study the makeup of diseases such as cystic fibrosis, cancer, or diabetes.

Capecchi attributes much of his success to determination and luck. "You have to have good ideas, and you have to be able to carry them out," he said to reporters. "We gambled, and fortunately, the timing was right."