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SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5 / AP / BCN) ― University of California, San Francisco professor Elizabeth H. Blackburn said Monday that she hoped her Nobel Prize in medicine would inspire others, especially young women in science.

Blackburn, 60, a molecular biologist, shared the prize with Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak. The trio won for discovering a key mechanism in the genetic operations of cells -- namely how chromosomes protect themselves as cells divide.

It's work that has inspired experimental cancer therapies, new lines of research into cancer and may offer insights into aging.

Scores of people turned out to congratulate Blackburn at the university's Mission Bay campus, cheering and raising champagne toasts.

This was the first time two women have shared in a single Nobel science prize. Over the years, a total of 10 women have won the prize in medicine.

Greider, a San Diego native, is a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. Greider was also a PhD candidate at UC Berkeley under Blackburn when she observed enzymatic activity in 1984 that eventually led to the prize-winning discoveries. Meantime, Szostak has been at Harvard Medical School since 1979 and is currently professor of genetics.

"The discoveries... have added a new dimension to our understanding of the cell, shed light on disease mechanisms, and stimulated the development of potential new therapies," the Nobel Academy said in awarding the prize.

The research by Blackburn, Greider and Szostak revealed the workings of chromosome features called telomeres, which play an important role in the aging of cells.

Their work, done in the 1970s and 1980s, showed how features at the tips of chromosomes — telomeres — can keep them from getting progressively shorter as cells divide. It's been compared to the way plastic tips on the ends of shoelaces keep the laces from fraying.

Blackburn and Greider discovered an enzyme, telomerase, that maintains the lengths of the telomeres. Later research has shown that telomerase is switched on in almost all cancers.

Telomerase is active before birth, when cells are dividing rapidly. By age 4 or 5 it's basically shut off in almost all cells. That means the telomeres degrade over time, leading those cells to age and eventually stop dividing. But scientists have shown that adding telomerase to human cells can extend their lifespan indefinitely.

Such research spurred speculation that telomerase might turn out to be a fountain of youth. But experts said that aging is more complicated than just changes in telomeres. Scientists are still studying what impact telomeres might have; perhaps they will reveal ways to ward off some aspects of aging, researchers said.

Still other work showed that telomerase helps cancer cells sustain their uncontrolled growth. Scientists are trying to exploit that to produce new therapies.

The farthest along is a vaccine-like approach, which trains the immune system to home in on telomerase as a way to identify and attack cancerous cells. Other approaches attempt to use it as a signal that activates a cell-killing virus, or to devise a drug to block the enzyme's effect.

The prize includes $1.4 million, split among the three winners.

At a news conference in San Francisco, Blackburn joked that she had gone through the five stages of happiness after the phone rang in the middle of the night. "I went through, `Where's the phone?' to disbelief to dazed to, 'I think it's sinking in now," to, `I'm just so happy.'"

Greider, in Baltimore, said she was telephoned just before 5 a.m. with the news that she had won.

"It's really very thrilling, it's something you can't expect," she said, adding that the award was "really a tribute to curiosity-driven basic science."

Nobel judges said women are underrepresented in Nobel statistics because the award-winning research often dates back several decades to a time when science was dominated by men. Still, critics claim the judges aren't looking hard enough for deserving women candidates.

The Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, literature and the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced later this week, while the economics award will be presented on Oct. 12.

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