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In
This Issue:
More
Than A Council of Engineers
Low
Rotunda Teems with Job Seekers
Chemistry
Nobel Laureate Ciechangover Speaks to SEAS Students and Alumni
Columbia
Video Network Circles the Globe
Dean's
Engineering Council Members, Spring 2005
Columbia
Increases Services to Alumni
CESAA Creates Medal
to Honor SEAS Alums in Non-Engineering Posts
Your Gift Planning
Can Help the School
Art
and Science of Folding Structures
Schulz,
Shinozuka Receive Awards

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Chemistry Nobel Laureate Ciechanover Speaks To SEAS Students and Alumni
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| Nobel Laureate Aaron Ciechanover |
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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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