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Home > Prizes > Prize Recipients > Alexander Varshavsky

Alexander Varshavsky

2010 Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science

Location

Pasadena, CA

Title

Thomas Hunt Morgan professor of biology, Caltech

Area(s) of Research

Ubiquitin and protein degradation significant to understanding cancer, immunity, and other illnesses

Education

Institute of Molecular Biology (PhD, organization and structure of chromosomes), Moscow University

Country of Birth

Russia

Links to learn more about Alexander Varshavsky's work
  • caltech.edu

Tags
biochemistry biology Caltech cancer research chromosomes immunology MIT russia
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A photo of Alexander Varshavsky in an office
Photo courtesy of Caltech

Alexander Varshavsky was born to do science: His father was a scientist, his mother a physician. He was also born into a society whose privations suppressed many of the great scientific minds of the period. “Before managing to escape from the Soviet Union in 1977,” he says, “I had some brushes with disasters that would have left me unable to become a scientist, had I not been lucky.”

Still, he won a place as a student in the chemistry department at prestigious Moscow University, and later at the Institute of Molecular Biology. In 1973, Varshavshy received his PhD on the topic of the organization and structure of chromosomes. When his scientific papers found their way into Western journals, he began to receive invitations to speak abroad, but came hard up against the Soviet barriers to travel. Eventually, Varshavsky defected to the United States, where almost immediately he was offered a position at the biology department at MIT. He spent 15 years there, studying first the structure and replication of chromosomes, before changing focus to the ubiquitin system, a new area of study at the time.

In 1992, he moved his laboratory to California Institute of Technology (Caltech), to become the Smits Professor of Cell Biology. He and his colleagues there continue to advance research in the field of ubiquitin and regulated protein degradation, significant to the understanding of cancer, immunity, birth defects, and many other illnesses.

Varshavsky is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the enormity of his achievements is reflected in the number of awards he has received in recognition of his work. This includes the first $1 million Gotham Prize in 2007 for an original approach to killing cancer cells, called deletion-specific targeting (DST), which, he says, “involves finding a genuine Achilles heel of cancer cells.”

 

Awards and Accomplishments

  • Gotham Prize (2007)
  • Wilson Medal
  • Wolf Prize, Medicine (2001)
  • Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, Columbia University (2001)
  • General Motors Sloan Prize
  • Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research (2000)
  • Gairdner Award (1999)
Tags
biochemistry biology Caltech cancer research chromosomes immunology MIT russia

Jury Members

2010 Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science

Claudio Basilico

Professor and Chairman, Department of Microbiology, New York University School of Medicine

Bruce Cronstein

Professor of Medicine, Pathology and Pharmacology, New York University School of Medicine

Rudolf Jaenisch

Member, Whitehead Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Joan Massagué

Chairman of the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Jan Vilcek

Professor of Microbiology, New York University School of Medicine
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Related Prize Recipients

Angelika Amon

Angelika Amon (1967-2020) receives the Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science for groundbreaking research on the molecular signals that regulate cell growth and division, and how errors in these processes contribute to birth defects and cancer.
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Alexander Rudensky

Alexander Rudensky receives the Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science for fundamental molecular insights on the workings of a type of immune cell with a breathtaking array of functions—in autoimmune disease, inflammatory disorders, and cancer.
Portrait of Alexander Rudensky

Titia de Lange

Titia de Lange receives the Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science for seminal contributions to the biology of telomeres—the aiglet-like structures that protect the ends of chromosomes in living cells—and for discovering telomere-binding proteins that help ensure genome stability and prevent tumor formation.
Titia de Lange

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