Fox Chase Cancer Center to Host Symposium Celebrating 20-Year Anniversary of Nobel Prize for Discovery That Advanced Understanding of Cancer and Development of New Drugs

Glenn Rall, PhD

Fox Chase Cancer Center’s Center for Immunology will host its 14th Annual Scientific Symposium on Friday, October 18, 2024. The event will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry being awarded for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation. Much of that work was done at Fox Chase. 

This pioneering discovery revealed an important process in the cell’s “recycling system” in which protein building blocks can be repurposed to make new proteins, a key to cell growth. Discovery of the key cellular players in this process led to the development of new drugs that fight cancer by interfering with this pathway.

“This annual event is one of the center’s signature symposia, and we’re particularly excited this year to celebrate this Nobel Prize-winning discovery and reflect on the science that it catalyzed over the past 20 years,” said Glenn Rall, PhD, Chief Academic Officer and Professor in the Cancer Signaling and Microenvironment Research Program at Fox Chase. 

The symposium will recognize researchers Irwin A. “Ernie” Rose, PhD, Avram Hershko, MD, PhD, and Aaron Ciechanover, PhD, who were awarded the Nobel Prize in 2004 for their discovery. Much of Rose’s and Hershko’s work was done at Fox Chase, and the center will be welcoming Hershko as one of its two keynote speakers for this event.

Ubiquitin is a regulatory protein that received its name because it is ubiquitous — found everywhere in the cells of animals and plants. In normal cell function, it serves as the cell’s recycling system by targeting unwanted proteins for breakdown and recycling once their specific task within the cell is done. Along with recycling products the cell no longer needs, ubiquitin helps regulate the important proteins that control cell reproduction.

In decoding this process, Hershko, Rose, and Ciechanover helped future researchers understand how cancers develop when the degradation cycle is disrupted.

The implications of the discovery weren’t fully realized until 2003, when a drug came to market that harnessed the power of ubiquitin. Bortezomib, known commercially as Velcade, interferes with the proteasome to help destroy tumors in multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow. It was the first medication based on the award-winning team’s research to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

“This symposium is really a superb example of the importance of studying basic biology to find appropriate applications for discoveries,” said Siddharth Balachandran, PhD, Professor and Co-Director of the Center for Immunology. “When you understand how a process works normally, you can use that understanding to exploit it in circumstances where it can be useful, just like we’ve seen done with ubiquitin.” The symposium’s other keynote, Eric Fischer, PhD, will describe how the ubiquitin system is leveraged to destroy the drivers of cancer pathogenesis.

“The event is free of charge and open to all. It’s a great way for researchers to meet new collaborators both within Philadelphia and beyond,” said Yibin Yang, PhD, Associate Professor in the Cancer Signaling and Microenvironment Research Program. “We’re looking forward to welcoming everyone to the center and celebrating the groundbreaking discovery of this process.”

The symposium will be held in Fox Chase’s Leidy Auditorium on Friday, October 18, 2024, and will feature presentations by eight scientists.