Aaron Ciechanover, MD, DSc

Nobel Laureate in Chemistry
Distinguished Research Professor, Faculty of Medicine Technion
Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel

Dr. Ciechanover received his M.D. from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He then completed his national service as military physician and continued his studies to obtain a doctorate in biological sciences in the Faculty of Medicine in the Technion (D.Sc.). There, as a graduate student with Dr. Avram Hershko and in collaboration with Dr. Irwin A. Rose in Philadelphia, USA, they discovered that covalent attachment of ubiquitin to a target protein signals it for degradation. An important process in our cells is the production of proteins. But proteins must also be broken down. At the beginning of the 1980s, Aaron Ciechanover and his PhD mentor, Avram Hershko showed that one protein, ubiquitin, has a special mission in this context. When it is time for a protein to be broken down, a ubiquitin molecule attaches itself to the protein. The ubiquitin molecule serves as a key that enters a proteasome, a protein complex that divides the protein into smaller pieces. These can be used in the construction of other substances in the cell. Over the years, it became clear that ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis plays major roles in numerous cellular processes, and aberrations in the system underlie the pathogenetic mechanisms of many diseases, among them Cancer and neurodegenerative disorders. Among the numerous prizes Ciechanover received are the 2000 Albert Lasker Award, the 2002 EMET Prize, the 2003 Israel Prize, and the 2004 Nobel Prize (Chemistry; shared with Drs. Hershko and Rose). He is a member of numerous academics worldwide, including, United States National Academy of Sciences. Over the decades, Prof. Ciechanover’s laboratory has trained a large number of next generations of scientists and cancer biologists. Importance of Prof. Ciechanover’s work could be judged by the fact that there are over 97,000 publications containing the word, “Ubiquitination” in the PUBMED.