Download 41st Presentation Ceremony program

41st
Annual
Presentation
Ceremony
thursday / march 29, 2012
Lewis S.
Rosenstiel
award for distinguished work
in basic medical science
brandeis university
In 1971, the Lewis S. Rosenstiel
Award for Distinguished Work
in Basic Medical Science was
established as an expression of
the conviction that educational
institutions have an important
role to play in the encouragement
and development of basic science
as it applies to medicine.
Medals are presented annually at Brandeis
University on the basis of recommendations
from a panel of outstanding scientists selected
by the Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences
Research Center. Awards are given to scientists
for recent discoveries of particular originality and
importance to basic medical science research.
A $30,000 prize accompanies the award.
Since its inception, Brandeis University has
placed great emphasis on basic science and its
relationship to medicine. With the establishment
of the Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences
Research Center, made possible by the generosity of Lewis S. Rosenstiel in 1968, research in
basic medical science at Brandeis has been
expanded significantly. These awards provide
a way to extend the center’s support beyond
the campus community.
The winner of the 2012 Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award
for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Science
is Nahum Sonenberg, professor in the Department of Biochemistry at McGill University,
Montreal.
He was chosen for his discoveries of the mechanisms by which translational control regulates gene
expression and plays roles in cancer, development,
memory, innate immunity and virus infections.
These discoveries, which dramatically changed
thinking about translational control under physiological conditions and in disease, pave the way for
development of novel drugs to cure human disease.
Presentation Ceremony
presiding
James E. Haber
Abraham and Etta Goodman Professor of Biology
Director, Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences
Research Center
Brandeis University
address
Phillip A. Sharp
Institute Professor
Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1993 Nobel Prize Winner in Physiology or Medicine
presentation of medallions and awards
James E. Haber
response
Nahum Sonenberg
James McGill Professor, Department of Biochemistry
Deputy Director, Rosalind and Morris Goodman
Cancer Research Centre
McGill University
Montreal, Quebec
2012 Award Winner
Nahum Sonenberg
Nahum Sonenberg received a Ph.D. at the Weizmann
Institute of Science (Rehovot, Israel). He then joined
the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology in Nutley, N.J.,
with a Chaim Weizmann postdoctoral fellowship. He
moved to McGill University in Montreal in 1979, and
today he is a James McGill Professor in the Department
of Biochemistry and deputy director of the Rosalind
and Morris Goodman Cancer Research Centre.
Sonenberg’s primary research interests have been in
the field of translational control. With Aaron Shatkin he
identified the mRNA 5’ cap-binding protein, eIF4E, in
1978. He and his colleagues have studied the factors
that recruit ribosomes to the mRNA. He discovered the
IRES mechanism of translation initiation in eukaryotes
and the regulation of cap-dependent translation by
eIF4E-binding proteins. He also discovered that eIF4E is
a proto-oncogene, whose protein levels are elevated
in tumors. Subsequently, he showed that rapamycin
(an anticancer drug) inhibits eIF4E activity. While
generating eIF4E binding protein “knock-out” mice,
he found the protein plays important roles in metabolism, learning and memory, and innate immunity.
In 2002, Sonenberg was awarded the Robert L.
Noble Prize from the National Cancer Institute
of Canada (now the Canadian Cancer Society
Research Institute). He is an international research
scholar of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
and has been a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
since 1992. He was awarded the 2005 Killam Prize
for Health Sciences, and in 2006, he was elected
to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and
the Royal Society of the United Kingdom. He was
awarded the 2007 Katharine Berkan Judd Award
from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center,
the 2007 Roche Diagnostics Award and the 2008
Gairdner International Award. In 2009, he was
awarded the Canadian Institutes of Health Research
Health Researcher of the Year Award in Biomedical and Clinical Research. In 2010 he was made an
officer of the Order of Canada. In 2011, Sonenberg
received the Centenary Award from the Biochemical Society in the United Kingdom.
2012 Speaker
Phillip A. Sharp
A world leader of research in molecular biology and
biochemistry, Phillip A. Sharp is an institute professor
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Much of Sharp’s scientific work has been conducted
at MIT’s Center for Cancer Research (now the Koch
Institute for Integrative Cancer Research), which he
joined in 1974 and directed from 1985 to 1991. He sub­
sequently led the Department of Biology from 1991 to
1999 before assuming the directorship of the McGovern
Institute from 2000 to 2004. His research interests
have centered on the molecular biology of gene expression relevant to cancer and the mechanisms of RNA
splicing. His landmark achievement was the discovery
of RNA splicing in 1977. This work provided one of the
first indications of the startling phenomenon of “discontinuous genes” in mammalian cells. The discovery
that genes contain nonsense segments that are edited
out by cells in the course of utilizing genetic information is important in understanding the genetic causes
of cancer and other diseases. This discovery, which
fundamentally changed scientists’ understanding of the
structure of genes, earned Sharp the 1993 Nobel Prize
in Physiology or Medicine. His lab now has turned its
attention to understanding how RNA molecules act as
switches to turn genes on and off (RNA interference).
These newly discovered processes have revolutionized
cell biology and could potentially generate a new class
of therapeutics.
Sharp has authored more than 385 scientific papers.
He has received numerous awards and honorary
degrees and has served on many advisory boards for
the government, academic institutions, scientific societies and companies. His awards include the Gairdner
Foundation International Award; the General Motors
Cancer Research Foundation’s Alfred P. Sloan Jr. Prize
for Cancer Research; the Albert Lasker Basic Medical
Research Award; the National Medal of Science; and
the inaugural Double Helix Medal from Cold Spring
Harbor Laboratory. He is an elected member of the
National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and
the American Philosophical Society, and he is a foreign
fellow of the Royal Society of the United Kingdom.
A native of Kentucky, Sharp earned a B.A. from Union
College in Kentucky in 1966 and a Ph.D. in chemistry
from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
in 1969. He completed postdoctoral training at the
California Institute of Technology, where he studied
the molecular biology of plasmids from bacteria in
Professor Norman Davidson’s laboratory. Prior to
joining MIT, he was senior scientist at Cold Spring
Harbor Laboratory.
In 1978 Sharp co-founded Biogen (now Biogen Idec),
and in 2002 he co-founded Alnylam Pharmaceuticals,
an early-stage therapeutics company.
Recent Recipients
of the Lewis S.
Rosenstiel Award
for Distinguished
Work in Basic
Medical Science
2011: For their pioneering work in molecular
connections among histones, histone modifications
and chromatin structure and their effects on the
regulation of gene transcription.
C. David Allis
Tri-Institutional Professor
Joy and Jack Fishman Professor
Laboratory of Chromatin Biology and Epigenetics
The Rockefeller University
New York, N.Y.
Michael Grunstein
Distinguished Professor, Biological Chemistry
Department of Biological Chemistry
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, Calif.
2010: For their pioneering work in the field of
innate immunity.
Ruslan Medzhitov
David W. Wallace Professor of Immunobiology
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Yale School of Medicine
New Haven, Conn.
Jules Hoffmann
Professor and Distinguished Class
Research Director, Institute of Molecular
and Cellular Biology, CNRS
University Louis Pasteur
Strasbourg, France
2011 nobel prize in physiology or medicine
2009: For their pioneering work in the field of
stem cell research.
John Gurdon
Professor, Department of Zoology
Gurdon Institute
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, England
Irving Weissman
Professor of Pathology and Developmental Biology
Director, Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative
Medicine Institute
Stanford School of Medicine
Stanford, Calif.
Shinya Yamanaka
Professor, Kyoto University, Japan
Senior Investigator, Gladstone Institute of
Cardiovascular Disease
L.K. Whittier Foundation Investigator in Stem Cell Biology
Professor of Anatomy
University of California, San Francisco
2008: For their elucidation of the molecular machinery that guides proteins into their proper functional
shape, thereby preventing the accumulation of protein
aggregates that underlie many diseases, such as
Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
F. Ulrich Hartl
Director, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry
Martinsried, Germany
Arthur L. Horwich
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Yale School of Medicine
New Haven, Conn.
2007: For their pioneering work in understanding the
mechanisms of gene silencing by epigenetic chromosome modifications.
Mary F. Lyon
Mammalian Genetics Unit
MRC Harwell
Oxfordshire, England
Davor Solter
Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology
Freiburg, Germany
Azim Surani
Gurdon Institute
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, England
2006: For their pioneering development of powerful
new tools that allow the direct visualization of
molecules in living cells.
Martin Chalfie
William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Biological Sciences
Columbia University
New York, N.Y.
2008 nobel prize in chemistry
Roger Y. Tsien
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Professor of Pharmacology and Chemistry
& Biochemistry
University of California, San Diego
La Jolla, Calif.
2008 nobel prize in chemistry
A complete list of awardees may be viewed at
www.rose.brandeis.edu/Center/rose_past.html.