Research Area:
Unfolded Protein Response

Prof. Peter WALTER graduated from the Free University of Berlin in 1976, received an MS in Organic Chemistry from Vanderbilt University in 1977, and obtained a PhD in Biochemistry at The Rockefeller University in 1981. He began his academic career as an Assistant Professor at The Rockefeller University in 1982 before moving to the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in 1983. At UCSF, he advanced through the ranks and served as Department Chair of Biochemistry and Biophysics from 2001 to 2008. In 2021, he co-founded Altos Labs, where he served as Founding Institute Director of its Bay Area Institute of Science and Distinguished Investigator until 2025. Since 2026, he has been a Professor and Director of The Cell Health Initiative at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. He is also a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at UCSF and an Investigator Emeritus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

With a particular focus on the endoplasmic reticulum, the organelle in which many newly made proteins are assembled, Prof. Walter’s lab uncovered the “unfolded protein response”, a complex cell-internal signaling network that adjust the cell’s protein folding capacity to demand. Regulating the abundance of the endoplasmic reticulum is a fundamental process for all eukaryotic cells, and it is a key determinant for any number of diseases, including cancer, diabetes, and neurodegenerative diseases. Most disease connections arise because the cell is programmed to die, rather than putting defective and potentially harmful proteins on its surface. His lab has identified the genes that are centrally involved in the unfolded protein response and deciphered their function in this crucial cell-internal communication pathway.

Prof. Walter’s contributions to science have been recognized with many distinguished awards, including the 2014 Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine, the 2014 Lasker Award, the 2015 Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science, and the 2018 Breakthrough Prize. He is the 2016 President of the American Society of Cell Biology and an elected member of several prestigious scientific societies such as the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina, the US National Academy of Sciences, the US National Academy of Medicine, the American Association for Arts and Science, and the European Molecular Biology Organization. He is also a co-author of two of the most widely used textbooks in molecular biology — Molecular Biology of the Cell and Essential Cell Biology.