Research Area:
Mediated Ubiquitin Protein Degradation

Prof. Aaron Ciechanover received his medical degree from Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1975. Realizing how little people knew about pathology and disease mechanisms, he decided to switch his focus to basic research. He pursued graduate studies with Professor Avram Hershko at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, where he received his DSc degree in biochemistry in 1981. He was awarded a Doctor of Science honoris causa from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2008.

Prof. Ciechanover won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2004 for his contributions to the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation. The complex cascade of the ubiquitin pathway revolutionizes the field of research for life scientists. People have now become clear that degradation of cellular proteins is a highly complex, temporally controlled, and tightly regulated process that plays major roles in a variety of basic pathways during cell life and death, and in health and disease.

Among many academies, Prof. Ciechanover is member of the Israeli National Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (International Honorary Member), the American Philosophical Society, the US National Academy of Sciences and the US National Academy of Medicine (Foreign Associate), the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at the Vatican, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Foreign Member), the Russian Academy of Sciences (Foreign Member), and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.