Aaron Ciechanover

Prof. Aaron Ciechanover serves as the Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board at CropX Ltd. Prof. Ciechanover is a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 2004, for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation, a cellular process believed to play an important role in cancer, muscular and neurological diseases and immune and inflammatory responses. An anti-cancer drug based on this discovery is now in development. Prof. Ciechanover was voted as the 31st greatest Israeli of all times. Prof. Ciechanover is a Member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Aaron Ciechanover was born in Haifa, Israel in 1947. He is a Distinguished Research Professor in the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. He received his M.Sc. (1971) and M.D. (1973) from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He then completed his national service (1973-1976) as military physician, and continued his studies to obtain a doctorate in biological sciences in the Faculty of Medicine in the Technion (D.Sc.; 1982). There, as a graduate student with Dr. Avram Hershko and in collaboration with Dr. Irwin A. Rose from the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, USA, they discovered that covalent attachment of ubiquitin to a target protein signals it for degradation. Among the numerous prizes Ciechanover received are the 2000 Albert Lasker Award, the 2003 Israel Prize, and the 2004 Nobel Prize (Chemistry; shared with Drs. Hershko and Rose).