Centenary Prize 2009 Winner

Aaron Ciechanover
Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Israel

Awarded for his discovery and detailed analysis of the ubiquitin proteolytic system.

About the winner

Aaron Ciechanover was born in Haifa, Israel in 1947.  He is currently a Distinguished Research Professor in the Faculty of Medicine of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel.  

He received his MSc (1971) and MD (1975) from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel, and his DSc (1982) from the Technion.  There, as a graduate student with Dr Avram Hershko and in collaboration with Dr Irwin A. Rose from the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, they discovered that covalent attachment of ubiquitin to the target protein substrate signals it for degradation.  They deciphered the mechanism of conjugation in a cell-free system, described the general proteolytic function of the system in cells, and proposed a model according to which this modification serves as a recognition signal for a specific downstream protease.  

As a post doctoral fellow with Dr Harvey Lodish at the M.I.T., he continued his studies on the ubiquitin system and made additional important discoveries.   

Along the years it has become clear that ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis plays major roles in numerous cellular processes, and aberrations in the system underlie the mechanisms of many diseases, among them certain malignancies and neurodegenerative disorders.  These studies resulted later in the development of a novel and successful anti-cancer drug, and many more are in the pipeline.  

Among the many prizes that Dr Ciechanover received are:

• the 2000 Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research
• the 2003 Israel Prize in Biology
• the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.  

Among the many esteemed bodies, Dr Ciechanover is a member of the Israeli National Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (Vatican), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Foreign Fellow), the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (Foreign Associate), and the Institute of Medicine of the USA National Academies (Foreign Fellow).