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Ciechanover accepts his prize from King Gustav. (AP)
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Hershko accepts his prize from King Gustav. (AP)
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Ciechanover and Hershko in the lab.
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners December 11, 2004 |
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| Ciechanover shares a joke with a Swedish VIP (AP) |
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Avraham Hershko and Aharon Ciechanover were awarded on Friday the Nobel Prize for chemistry at a festive ceremony in Sweden's capital. This is the first time Israelis have won the most prestigious prize in the scientific world. The scientists' research was designed to determine how the human body marks for destruction faulty proteins to defend itself from illnesses such as cancer.
Ciechanover, 57, and Hershko, 67 were honored by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for their discoveries in the 1980's. They will share the prize of $1.25 million with Professor Irwin Rose, 78, of the University of California. Ciechanover is director of the Rappaport Family Institute for Research in Medical Sciences at the Technion in Haifa, and the Hungarian-born Hershko is a professor there.
The two scientists, in a press conference, warned of what they see as the declining state of Israel's educational system. "Israel will always have limited resources so we have to focus on the important, innovative and groundbreaking things," said Hershko. He added that "we couldn't do such things while the education system is collapsing."
Saying that "Israel's academia is in a bad state" and that "the Technion suffers badly from financial difficulties," Ciechanover echoed the need to invest more in education. :"We don't have oil, uranium or diamonds. Israel depends on its academia. All we have -- the Israel Defense Forces, Rafael [the Armament Development Authority] and the high-tech industry -- depends on what we have in our heads." He warned that "Cutting off this head is an act of suicide."
After meeting with representatives of the Stockholm Jewish community, Ciechanover and Hershko told Army Radio that "you could feel a surge of Jewish pride in the room." In the Israeli Embassy, they met with a Swedish cancer patient who reportedly recovered from illness as a result of medicines developed on the basis of their research.
Protein research relevant for cancer prevention
Ciechanover and Hershko found that potentially threatening proteins disease are "marked" for destruction with a molecule called ubiquitin which sends them to the body's "waste disposal" units, called proteasomes, that chop the marked proteins to pieces. When such degradation fails to work properly, the result can be diseases like degenerative brain diseases, cervical cancer and cystic fibrosis. So research in this area may lead to new drugs for those diseases and others, the academy said.
"We are not a building that stays still, we are all the time exchanging our proteins, synthesising and destroying them," said Ciechanover. "Some proteins get spoilt. We discovered the process by which the body exercises quality control."
Lars Thelander of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry said the trio's work was highly relevant for cancer research. Ciechanover said it had already "led to development of numerous drugs for degenerative diseases and malignancies that big pharmaceutical companies are busy working on."
Ciechanover said his work was never motivated by economic considerations, and pointed to his national pride in contributing to Israel's strong reputation in medical research. "I have never thought of money. We earn very small salaries in Israel," he said. "It is more the honor for Israel, for myself, that a small country can make it.... I am as proud for myself as I am for my country."
In 1978, then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. In 1994, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shared the peace prize with Yasser Arafat. In 1966, Shmuel Yosef Agnon shared the literature prize with Swedish writer Nelly Sachs. More recently, Daniel Kahneman won the prize in Economics.
Jews comprise about twenty percent of all Nobel Prize winners.
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