Who is Dr. Anatoly Melnikov?
James Watson, the United States, discovered the structure of DNA molecule when he was 25 years old, and he was awarded a Nobel Prize at 34 years.
Frederick Sanger, England, received his first Nobel Prize at 40 years for the structure determination of insulin.
Anatoly Melnikov, Russia, at the age of 60 created a gene test for the early detection of breast cancer. And it does not matter whether he will get a Nobel Prize, but we know for sure that this discovery will save millions of lives from cancer all over the world.
His path to oncology began with a job in a secluded Vologda’s hamlet in northern of Russia, when a 19-year-old feldsher, making an intravenous injection of glucose to a dying cancer patient, choking with despair and helplessness, promised that this injection can help her recover. Just then he made a firm decision to devote his life to studying cancer and the methods of its diagnosis.
40 years have been devoted to the study of molecular biology and genetics. He is the first in the world who discovered and described the phagemids, a new class of recombinant DNA. (Melnikov, A. A. et al., “Lambda phagemids and their transducing properties”, Gene, 28 (1984) 29–35). Now this term — phagemids — is used by biologists around the world. It was with his participation that it was first shown the reverse transcriptase is coded by the LINE-elements of the human genome; it was his work that made it possible to develop a new technology to analyze the methylation of the whole human genome.
The development of a unique technology that allows to create gene tests for early detection of oncological diseases is a logical result of the scientific and experimental activities of Anatoly Melnikov, who holds a pipette in hands at the laboratory table for more than half of his life. He is the creator of the test for early detection of breast cancer — ARNA Breast Cancer, or ARNA BC, with its accuracy close to 96%, confirmed in the laboratory, which exceeds the figures of all known methods of early diagnostics and has no analogues in the world.
As scientist himself notes, curiosity, hard work and observation are the main components of success, which, perhaps, are important not only in biology.
