41st Annual thursday / march 29, 2012 Presentation Ceremony 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 generos- ity 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 Depart- ment of Biochemistry at McGill University, Montreal. He was chosen for his discoveries of the mecha- nisms 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 physi- ological 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 metabo- lism, 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 Biomedi- cal and Clinical Research. In 2010 he was made an officer of the Order of Canada. In 2011, Sonenberg received the Centenary Award from the Biochemi- cal 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 expres- sion 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 “dis- continuous genes” in mammalian cells. The discovery that genes contain nonsense segments that are edited out by cells in the course of utilizing genetic informa- tion 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 soci- eties 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 Medi - cine, 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 machin- ery 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 chromo- some 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..