Anthony James Pawson was a British-born Canadian genetic scientist. He was known and recognized for his work on cellular organization, including how cells respond to growth signals, and how they communicate with each other.
Receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) are the high-affinity cell surface receptors for many polypeptide growth factors, cytokines, and hormones. Of the 90 unique tyrosine kinase genes identified in the human genome, 58 encode receptor tyrosine kinase proteins. Receptor tyrosine kinases have been shown not only to be key regulators of normal cellular processes but also to have a critical role in the development and progression of many types of cancer. Mutations in receptor tyrosine kinases lead to activation of a series of signalling cascades which have numerous effects on protein expression. The receptors are generally activated by dimerization and substrate presentation. Receptor tyrosine kinases are part of the larger family of protein tyrosine kinases, encompassing the receptor tyrosine kinase proteins which contain a transmembrane domain, as well as the non-receptor tyrosine kinases which do not possess transmembrane domains.
Harvey Franklin Lodish is a molecular and cell biologist, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Founding Member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, and lead author of the textbook Molecular Cell Biology. Lodish's research focused on cell surface proteins and other important areas at the interface between molecular cell biology and medicine.
Joseph Schlessinger is a Yugoslav-born Israeli-American biochemist and biophysician. He is chair of the Pharmacology Department at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, as well as the founding director of the school's new Cancer Biology Institute. His area of research is signaling through tyrosine phosphorylation, which is important in many areas of cellular regulation, especially growth control and cancer. Schlessinger's work has led to an understanding of the mechanism of transmembrane signaling by receptor tyrosine kinases and how the resulting signals control cell growth and differentiation.
Donald Max Engelman is Higgins Professor of Biochemistry at Yale University. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1997), fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the National Institutes of Health, and has been a Guggenheim fellow. He served as the editor of the Annual Review of Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry (1984–1993).
Laurence Harris Pearl FRS FMedSci is a British biochemist and structural biologist who is currently Professor of Structural Biology in the Genome Damage and Stability Centre and was Head of the School of Life Sciences at the University of Sussex.
Bruce William Stillman is a biochemist and cancer researcher who has served as the Director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) since 1994 and President since 2003. He also served as the Director of its NCI-designated Cancer Center for 25 years from 1992 to 2016. During his leadership, CSHL has been ranked as the No. 1 institution in molecular biology and genetics research by Thomson Reuters. Stillman's research focuses on how chromosomes are duplicated in human cells and in yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae; the mechanisms that ensure accurate inheritance of genetic material from one generation to the next; and how missteps in this process lead to cancer. For his accomplishments, Stillman has received numerous awards, including the Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. Prize in 2004 and the 2010 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, both of which he shared with Thomas J. Kelly of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, as well as the 2019 Canada Gairdner International Award for biomedical research, which he shared with John Diffley.
Ralf Heinrich Adams is a biochemist and cell biologist. He is director at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine and head of the Department of Tissue Morphogenesis in Münster, Germany.
Natalie G. Ahn is a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her research is focused on understanding the mechanisms of cell signaling, with a speciality in phosphorylation and cancers. Ahn's work uses the tools of "classical chemistry" to work on understanding the genetic code and how genetics affects life processes. She has been a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder since 2003, where she is a distinguished professor. She was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator between 1994 and 2014. In 2018, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Tobias C. Walther is the chair of the cell biology program at Sloan Kettering Institute in New York City and a professor at Weill Cornell School of Medicine, where he co-directs the Farese and Walther lab. He has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator since 2015. His primary responsibilities are to provide leadership in research and teaching in the scientific fields of metabolism, membrane biology and lipids.
Volker Haucke is a biochemist and cell biologist. He is Director of the Leibniz-Forschungsinstitut für Molekulare Pharmakologie Berlin (FMP) Berlin and Professor of Molecular Pharmacology at the Institute for Pharmacy of the Free University of Berlin.
Anthony Rex Hunter is a British-American biologist who is a professor of biology at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the University of California San Diego. His research publications list his name as Tony Hunter.
Sarah Spiegel is professor and chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). In the mid-1990s she discovered the sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) molecule, a lipid which has been identified as a signaler for the spread of cancer, inflammation, and cardiovascular disease. Her research continues to focus on S1P.
Sandhya Srikant Visweswariah is a scientist and academic at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. She was the Chairperson of the Department of Developmental Biology and Genetics and the Co-chair of the Department of Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Science. She additionally holds the position of Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Bergen, Norway. Her research involves the investigation of the mechanism of signal transduction via cyclic nucleotides, phosphodiesterases and novel cyclases in bacteria. Most recently, she was awarded a Bill and Melinda Gates Grand Challenges Explorations Grant for her proposal entitled "A Small Animal Model of ETEC-Mediated Diarrhea".
Marion Sewer (1972-2016) was a pharmacologist and professor at the University of California, San Diego's Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences known for her research on steroid hormone biogenesis and her commitment to increasing diversity in science. Much of her research centered around cytochrome P450, a family of enzymes involved in the conversion of cholesterol into steroid hormones. She died unexpectedly at the age of 43 from a pulmonary embolism on January 28, 2016, while traveling through the Detroit airport.
Alan Frederick Cowman AC, FRS, FAA, CorrFRSE, FAAHMS, FASP, FASM is an internationally acclaimed malaria researcher whose work specialises in researching the malaria-causing parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, and the molecular mechanisms it uses to evade host responses and antimalarial drugs. As of May 2024, he is the deputy directory and Laboratory Head of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) in Melbourne, and his laboratory continues to work on understanding how Plasmodium falciparum, infects humans and causes disease. He was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society in 2011 and awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia in 2019 for his "eminent service to the biological sciences, notably to molecular parasitology, to medical research and scientific education, and as a mentor."
Karen Renee Gibson Fleming is a Professor of Biophysics at Johns Hopkins University. She investigates the energetics of transmembrane helix-helix interactions. Fleming was awarded the 2020 Protein Society Carl Brändén Award.
Alexandra C. Newton is a Canadian and American biochemist. She is a Distinguished Professor of pharmacology at the University of California, San Diego. Newton runs a multidisciplinary Protein kinase C and Cell signaling biochemistry and cell biology research group in the School of Medicine, investigating molecular mechanisms of signal transduction in the Phospholipase C (PLC) and Phosphoinositide 3-kinase signaling pathways. She has been continuously funded by the US National Institutes of Health since 1988.
Yusuf Awni Hannun is an American molecular biologist, biochemist, and clinician. He is known for the discovery that sphingolipids have signaling functions.
Susan J. Baserga is an American physician who is the William H. Fleming Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University. Her research considers the molecular basis of ribosomes, and the mechanistic basis of inherited human disease.
