Aaron Ciechanover, MD, DSc, who is a Research Professor of Biochemistry at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, has served as a Visiting Professor in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Northwestern since 2003.  Dr. Ciechanover is one of the discoverers of the critically important ubiquitin-proteasome pathway, through which proteins undergo regulated degradation and recycling in cells.  Ubiquitin-mediated degradation of proteins is central to the regulation of basic cellular processes, including the cell cycle, transcriptional activation, growth and development, differentiation, apoptosis, receptor modulation and DNA repair.  For his seminal work in elucidating the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway, Dr. Ciechanover, along with Drs. Avram Hershko and Irwin Rose, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2004.  Dr. Ciechanover is currently collaborating with other researchers in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine on studies examining the role of ubiquitin-mediated degradation of key proteins in alveolar epithelial cells as determinants of acute lung injury.

For more information about Dr. Ciechanover and the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, please visit http://nobelprize.org/chemistry/laureates/2004/.