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E M B AR G O E D until: December 1, 2005, 11 pm EST, 4 pm GMT, 17:00 CET
Professor Tom Rapoport from Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA, has been awarded the Max Delbrück Medal in Berlin for his "seminal role in the elucidation of the mechanisms of protein transport in cells". Proteins are the building material for the body and critical for its proper functioning. Professor Rapoport identified essential cellular structures which carry proteins across the cell membrane and deliver it to the "customers".
"A cell is like a factory: one of its most important jobs is to produce proteins. But in cellular factories, the sorting task is complicated by the fact that proteins are used by the cell itself as well as delivered to outside "customers", Professor Rapoport said in his lecture following the award ceremony. He was able to demonstrate that a channel located within the cell membrane plays a crucial role in this process. This channel not only carries some proteins through the membrane, but also stores others. For several years, Professor Rapoport has been studying how the characteristic form of an organelle develops and, in particular, the tube system which extends throughout the entire cell and is necessary for the transport of proteins.
Tom Rapoport was born on June 17, 1947 in Cincinnati, USA. His parents had fled Nazi-Germany. In the fifties, his family returned to Europe and eventually went to East Berlin. Following high school, Professor Rapoport studied chemistry and biochemistry at Humboldt University in Berlin and earned his PhD in 1972. He then became an investigator at the Central Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR in Berlin-Buch. In 1982, he worked for a few months in the laboratory of Günter Blobel at Rockefeller University, New York, USA, who in 1999 received the Nobel Prize. In 1985, Tom Rapoport became Professor for Cell Biology and research group leader at the Central Institute in Berlin-Buch, which, after German reunification, became the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch in 1992. Tom Rapoport became research group leader at the MDC and in January 1995 he joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School in Boston, where he was appointed as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator in 1997.
Professor Rapoport has received many honours and is a member of several prestigious organizations including the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina, the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Science. In addition, he is an External Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen. Professor Rapoport has been awarded the Johannes Müller Prize for Experimental Medicine, the Rudolf-Virchow Prize, and the Otto Warburg Medal of the Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Begun in 1992, the Max Delbrück Medal is given annually to an outstanding scientist and is awarded at the "Berlin Lectures on Molecular Medicine". The "Berlin Lectures" are organized by the MDC, the three Universities in Berlin, biomedical research institutions, and the Schering Forschungsgesellschaft (Research Foundation). The MDC is a national research laboratory of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres and named after the Nobel Prize Winner Max Delbrück, a Berlin born physicist and biologist (September 4, 1906 Berlin - March 10, 1981 Pasadena/USA).
Recipients of the Max Delbrück Medal
2005 Professor Tom Rapoport, Harvard Medical School, Boston/USA
2004 Professor Victor J. Dzau, Duke Universität, Durham (USA)
2003 Professor Ronald D. G. McKay, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), Bethesda, USA
2002 Professor Roger Y. Tsien, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, USA
2001 Professor Eric S. Lander, Whitehead Institute, Cambridge, USA
2000 Professor Joan Argetsinger Steitz, Yale Universität, New Haven, USA)
1999 Professor Paul Berg, Stanford Universität, USA (Nobel Prize in
Chemistry, 1980)
1998 Professor Svante Pääbo, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
1997 Professor Charles Weissmann, University of Zurich, Switzerland
1996 Professor Robert A. Weinberg, Whitehead Institute, Cambridge, USA
1995 Professor Jean-Pierre Changeux, Pasteur-Institut, Paris, Frankreich
1994 Professor Sydney Brenner, Universität Cambridge, Großbritannien (Nobel Prize in Medicine, 2002)
1993 cancelled
1992 Professor Günter Blobel, Rockefeller Universität New York, USA (Nobel Prize in Medicine, 1999)
Press and Public Affairs
Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine(MDC) Berlin-Buch
Barbara Bachtler
Robert-Rössle-Str. 10
13125 Berlin
Phone: +49/30/9406-38 96
Fax.: +49/30/9406-38 33
e-mail: bachtler@mdc-berlin.de
http://www.mdc-berlin.de
http://cellbio.med.harvard.edu/faculty/rapoport/
http://www.mdc-berlin.de/aktuelles/meetings/berlin_lectures.htm
Prof. Tom Rapoport, Recipient of the Max Delbrück Medal 2005
Photo: Harvard Medical School
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