Aaron Ciechanover

2004 Nobel Laureate, Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

Aaron Ciechanover is currently a distinguished University Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel. He received his MSc (1971) and MD (1973) from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and his PhD from the Technion (1982). There, as a graduate student with Dr. Hershko and in collaboration with Dr. Rose from Philadelphia, they discovered that tagging of protein substrates with ubiquitin, target them for proteasomal degradation. 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 pathogenic mechanisms of many diseases, among them certain malignancies and neurodegenerative disorders. Consequently, the system has become an important platform for drug development. Among the prizes he received are the 2000 Albert Lasker Award, the 2003 Israel Prize, and the 2004 Nobel Prize (Chemistry; shared with Drs. Hershko and Rose). Among the learnt societies, he is a member of the Israeli National Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the National Academies of Sciences (NAS) and Medicine (NAM) of the USA )(Foreign Member), and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS; Foreign Member).