The Protein Society Announces Awards

The Protein Society has announced the recipients of its 2024 awards. Recipients include Neil Kelleher, Alexandra Newton, David Craik, David Cortez, and Jeffery W. Kelly, members of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. The TPS awards will be presented at the society’s annual meeting in July in Vancouver, Canada.

Kelleher is a professor of molecular biology and director of the Chemistry of Life Processes Institute and Northwestern Proteomics at Northwestern University. He is the recipient of the 2024 Christian B. Anfinsen Award, which recognizes significant technological achievement or methodological advances in protein science. Since 1999, the Kelleher lab has advanced top-down proteomics, studied chromatin structure and function, and discovered microbial natural products and the gene clusters that compose them.

Kelleher has received numerous awards, including the Biemann Medal from the American Society for Mass Spectrometry and the Pfizer Prize in Enzyme Chemistry from the American Chemical Society. The TPS honors him for his fundamental contributions to the field of top-down proteomics, and his work in proteomics promises to have profound and revolutionary impacts on the biological sciences and medicine.

Newton is a professor of pharmacology at the University of California, San Diego. She is the recipient of the Marie Maynard Daly Award, which recognizes innovative research at the interface between protein science and human health. Newton is interested in how dysregulated signaling by protein kinases, such as Akt and protein kinase C, and phosphatases is implicated in cancer and degenerative diseases.

Newton is president of the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. In addition to this award, she recently received an honorary degree from Simon Fraser University. According to TPS, she is being honoured for her groundbreaking discoveries about the structure and function of protein kinase C and how mutations in this enzyme lead to cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.

Craik is Professor of Chemistry and Structural Biology at the University of Queensland and Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Innovations in Peptide and Protein Sciences. He is the recipient of the Emil Thomas Kaiser Prize, which recognises a recent and highly significant contribution to the application of chemistry to the study of proteins. Craik’s laboratory focuses on peptide-based drug design and the use of plants as biofactories for the production of high-value pharmaceuticals.

Craik has received several international awards, including the Adrien Albert Prize and the HG Smith Medal, the Hirschmann Prize in Peptide Chemistry and the GlaxoSmithKline Award for Research Excellence. He is a Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry. According to TPS, Craik is being honoured for his pioneering work on the discovery, structural characterisation and applications of cyclotides, small disulfide-rich peptides that protect plants from pathogens.

Cortez is chair and professor of biochemistry at Vanderbilt University. He is the recipient of the Hans Neurath Prize, which recognizes individuals who have made outstanding recent contributions to basic protein research. Cortez’s laboratory uses techniques from genetics, proteomics, cell biology, and structural biology to study replication stress, DNA damage responses, and other pathways that control genome stability.

Cortez is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has received awards from the Pew Charitable Trust, the National Cancer Institute, and MD Anderson Cancer Center. According to TPS, Cortez is being honored for his world-renowned leadership in DNA damage response and repair mechanisms and cancer pathophysiology, where he developed and applied highly creative technological approaches to identify and characterize proteins involved in DNA and genome maintenance.

Kelly is a professor of chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute. He is a recipient of the Stein & Moore Award, which recognizes distinguished leaders in protein science who have made sustained and high-impact research contributions to the field. Kelly’s laboratory seeks to understand the principles of protein folding and to understand the basis of misfolding and/or aggregation diseases in order to develop novel therapeutic strategies using chemical, biophysical, and biological approaches.

Kelly has received numerous awards, including the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the Wolf Prize in Chemistry, the EB Hershberg Award for Important Discoveries in Medicinally Active Substances, and the Gabby Award in Biotechnology and Medicine. He is a member of the National Academy of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. According to TPS, Kelly is being honored for his major contributions to the understanding of peptide and protein folding and misfolding, including the development of new treatments for amyloid diseases.