Aaron Ciechanover was born in Haifa, Israel in 1947. He is currently a Distinguished Research Professor in the Faculty of medicine at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel. He received his M.Sc. (1971) and M.D. (1973) from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He then completed his national service (1973-1976) as military physician, and continued his studies to obtain a doctorate in biological sciences in the Faculty of Medicine in the Technion (D.Sc.; 1982). 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, USA, they discovered that covalent attachment of ubiquitin to a target protein signals it for degradation. They deciphered the mechanism of conjugation, described the general proteolytic functions of the system, 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 pathogenetic mechanisms of many diseases, among them certain malignancies and neurodegenerative disorders. Consequently, the system has become an important platform for drug development. 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). Among many academies, Ciechanover is member of the Israeli National Academy of Sciences and Humanities, The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Foreign Fellow), the American Philosophical Society, the National Academies of Sciences (NAS) and Medicine (NAM) of the USA (Foreign Associate), the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at the Vatican, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS; Foreign Member), the Russian Academy of Sciences (Foreign Member), and the German Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina).
About Ciechanover’s Lab:
The laboratory is located in the Rappaport-Technion’s Integrated Cancer Center (R-TICC) in the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and Research Institute of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. The Center was established in 2003 through the vision and a generous donation from David and Janet Polak. It has recently been expanded significantly – mostly through exceptionally generous donations from the Rappaport Family Foundation and the D. Dan Kahn Foundation administered by the Wolf Family which will enable us to secure long-term state-of the art research carried out by talented Faculty members working in a contemporary facility. The laboratory focuses on fundamental aspects of cancer, including angiogenesis, mechanisms of metastases, genetics, and the role of the ubiquitin system in the pathogenesis of the disease. We currently expand its activity to include many more aspects of this multi-faceted disease, including informatics, metabolomics, and in collaboration with the Oncology Centers in Northern Israel – to application of Precision Medicine for the benefit of cancer patients. In that respect, we are developing a novel anti-cancer drug based on a discovery made in the laboratory. It is uses a novel mechanism to kill malignant cells, a mechanism which is not being used by any other anti-cancer modality. In that sense, it can be used with other anti-cancer modalities, which together will have a much stronger effect than being used independently.
