Dr Sydney Brenner and Sir John Sulston of Britain and Dr Robert Horvitz of the United States won the 2002 Nobel Medicine Prize today for work on how genes regulate organ development and cell death.
The three share the $1 million prize for seminal discoveries into how genes affect organs and the death of cells, shedding new light on to the development of many diseases, Sweden's Karolinska Institute said in its citation.
Programmed cell death - or "cell suicide" - is a natural process in which billions of cells die every day while a similar number of new ones are created to allow the body and its organs to develop.
"Knowledge of programmed cell death has helped us to understand the mechanisms by which some viruses and bacteria invade our cells," the institute said.
"We also know that in AIDS, neurogenerative diseases, stroke and myocardial infarction, cells are lost as a result of excessive cell death".
Many researchers, including those focusing on cancer, are now investigating programmed cell death, and many treatments are based on stimulation of the cellular "suicide programme".