Aaron Ciechanover

Technion Distinguished Professor and 2004 Nobel Laureate Aaron Ciechanover is the founder of the Rappaport-Technion Integrated Cancer Center (R-TICC) at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine.

Professor Ciechanover – together with Technion Distinguished Professor Avram Hershko and the late Dr. Irwin Rose of the University of California, Irvine – was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation, the process by which the body destroys proteins that are no longer useful. That research has led to the development of several anti-cancer drugs including Velcade® and an entire family of Immunomodulatory drugs.

Born in Haifa, Israel, Prof. Ciechanover earned his M.Sc. and M.D. degrees from the Hebrew University Medical School in Jerusalem. After three years as a military combat physician in the Israel Defense Forces, he continued his graduate studies at the Technion, under the supervision of Professor Avram Hershko, and obtained his Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) degree in 1981. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he became a Technion faculty member in 1984. Prof. Ciechanover has served as Director of the Rappaport Family Institute for Research in the Medical Sciences; the founding Director of the Lorey I. Lokey Interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences and Engineering; head of the David and Janet Polak Center for Cancer Research and Vascular Biology; Vice Chancellor of the Guangdong Technion Israel Institute of Technology, and Founder and Co-director of the R-TICC, which integrates the university’s renowned engineering capabilities with oncology care and research.

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Prof. Ciechanover has received numerous awards that include the Albert Lasker Award in Basic Medical Research, the EMET Israeli Prime Minister Prize in Life Sciences and Medicine, and the Israel Prize for Biology (2003). He has published more than 200 articles and book chapters. His contributions to science and humanity have been recognized with honorary doctorates from more than 50 universities, numerous academic honours.

Prof. Ciechanover is a member of the Israeli National Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the National Academies of Sciences (NAS) and Medicine (NAM) of the United States, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at the Vatican, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Russian Academy of Sciences.