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In This Issue:
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Chemistry Nobel Laureate Ciechanover Speaks To SEAS Students and Alumni
Aaron Ciechanover, the 2004 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, discussed his research on protein degradation to an audience of more than 300 students, faculty and invited guests at a special lecture sponsored by the School. Dr. Ciechanover, of the Faculty of Medicine at the Cancer and Vascular Biology Research Center of Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, shared last year’s Nobel prize in Chemistry for discovering how the cell controls processes by breaking down certain proteins and not others. He spoke about how this knowledge impacts developing drugs for targeting specific diseases. Dr. Ciechanover’s work shows that proteins are targeted to be destroyed by the molecule ubiquitin. When ubiquitin fastens to a protein, they move together into the cell’s proteasome, which releases the ubiquitin but captures the protein and then destroys it. The proteasome removes damaged, misfolded, nonfunctional and potentially toxic proteins from the cell. When the process does not work properly, illness and disease can occur. Diseases of the immune system, inflammatory diseases, cystic fibrosis and certain cancers, such as cervical cancer and multiple myolomas, are but a few examples. Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, amyotropic lateral sclerosis and spongiform enceph-alopathies are also linked to faulty proteasomal function. By understanding how normal protein degradation should occur, it is possibile to develop drugs against these diseases and others. Dr. Ciechanover received the M.D. from Hebrew University Medical
School in Jerusalem in 1974. Following three years in the Israel
Defense Forces, he was a graduate student at the Technion, from
which he received a Ph. D. degree in 1981. |
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