Varshavsky
wins Wolf Prize
Mark Wheeler
For his discovery
of a critical protein system that regulates normal cell division and many
other biological processes, Caltech’s Alexander Varshavsky has been
named the corecipient of the 2001 Wolf Foundation Prize in Medicine.
Varshavsky,
the Smits Professor of Cell Biology, will share the award with Avram Hershko
of the Technion Israel Institute of Technology. The Wolf Prize was established
in 1978, and is designed to promote science and art for the benefit of
mankind. Specifically, the pair is being honored for the discovery of
“the ubiquitin system of intracellular protein degradation and the
crucial functions of this system in cellular regulation.” The prize
includes an honorarium of $100,000 that will be split between the two
awardees.
Proteins
are biology’s blue-collar workers. They are the catalysts that jump-start
the various reactions of cellular life, telling cells when it’s time
to divide, differentiate, or die, and monitoring the timing of such events.
When its specific job is done, it’s often critical that a particular
protein should be destroyed and thereby cease functioning.
Ubiquitin
is a protein that attaches itself to other proteins within a cell, marking
them for degradation (or destruction) by proteases, still another kind
of specialized protein. Ubiquitin is, well, ubiquitous in all organisms
other than bacteria, hence its name. Using both mouse cells and baker’s
yeast as model organisms, Varshavsky proved that ubiquitin is essential
for protein degradation in living cells. His laboratory also showed that
the ubiquitin system plays major roles in a number of biological processes,
including cell growth and division, DNA repair, and responses to stress.
Subsequent work by numerous laboratories uncovered many other functions
of this remarkable system, including its multiple roles in the functioning
of the brain (for example, memory formation), in the development of most
organs in the body, and in the regulation of general metabolism.
Conversely,
malfunctions of the ubiquitin system often allow the cell’s mechanisms
to run amok. These mal-functions thus play major roles in many human diseases,
including cancer,
bacterial and viral infections, and neurodegenerative syndromes like Parkinson’s
and Alzheimer’s diseases. Varshavsky’s work on the ubiquitin
system was instrumental for the current efforts to devise new classes
of drugs to attack such diseases.
Varshavsky
is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Microbiology. His other
honors include the 1998 Merit Award from the National Institutes of Health;
the 1998 Novartis-Drew Award in Biomedical Science; the 1999 Gairdner
International Award from Canada’s Gairdner Foundation; the 2000 Sloan
Prize from the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation; the 2000 Albert
Lasker Award in Basic Medical Research from the Lasker Foundation; and
the 2001 Merck Award from the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular
Biology.
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