Anthony Pawson
Anthony James Pawson CH (known as Tony Pawson, born October 18, 1952 in Maidstone, Kent; † August 7, 2013 ) was a British- Canadian molecular biologist. He was a professor at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto and a professor at the University of Toronto. He was considered one of the favorites to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Life
Pawson earned a bachelor's degree in biochemistry in 1973 at Cambridge University in Cambridge, United Kingdom. His doctoral work for the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, he graduated with a Ph.D. in molecular biology at the University of London from. As a postdoctoral fellow, he worked at the University of California at Berkeley, California. He received first professorships 1981 ( Assistant Professor ) in the Department of Microbiology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and 1985 (Associate Professor ) at the University of Toronto, Toronto. In the same year he also took a job as a " Senior Scientist " at the city's Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, which is the Mount Sinai Hospital affiliated in Toronto. 1989 Pawson received a full professorship at the University of Toronto and, in 1994, in addition the head of the department "Molecular Biology and Cancer " at the Samuel Lunenefeld Research Institute.
Tony Pawson died on August 7, 2013 at the age of 60 years, the cause of death was not disclosed. Two years earlier, his wife Maggie died of lung cancer. Pawson had two children and a stepson.
Work
Pawson has made significant contributions to understanding of cell communication and signal transduction. In the latter, a specific binding to extracellular receptors initiates intracellular processes, for example by receptor tyrosine kinases. The blockade of certain tyrosine kinases by tyrosine kinase inhibitors provides a new option in the treatment of certain cancers dar. Starting from Pawson's identification of the SH2 domain as a prototype of the protein domain that mediates intracellular protein interactions, many other such domains were identified. Pawson has combined genetic, biochemical and structural analytical approaches in his research.
Recent work dealing with the proteins that regulate cancer cells and normal cells, the cell polarity, including the orientation of axons.