Scientists Mariano Barbacid and Alfred Lewis Goldberg will receive an honorary doctorate from UB

Mariano Barbacid, discoverer of human oncogenes

Professor Mariano Barbacid, expert on molecular oncology, will be accompanied by his sponsor José Luis Rosa, tenured lecturer from the Department of Physiological Sciences II of the Faculty of Medicine of UB. Mariano Barbacid (Madrid, 1949) is an internationally prestigious scientist who has developed pioneering research on the field of molecular oncology and the study of the molecular basis of the nervous system. Dr Barbacidʼs research has broken new ground; it has studied in depth the different signalling and regulation pathways of cell proliferation and it has enabled to design therapeutic strategies for different types of cancer. Mariano Barbacid heads the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO). In 1971, he got his degree from the Faculty of Chemical Sciences (Biochemistry) of the Complutense University of Madrid, where he also obtained his PhD in 1974. That year he joined the National Cancer Institute of the United States, where he developed his postdoctoral training and, then, he created his own research group. In 1982, his group achieved to isolate for the first time a mutated human gene abled to cause cancer (an oncogene). Some months later, Barbacid and his collaborators proved that this human oncogene was a mutation of the H-Ras gene. Moreover, they established its mechanism of oncogenic activation by means of a simple somatic mutation. The scientific relevance of his work has been recognized by many national and international awards, including the King Juan Carlos I Award and the Rhoads Memorial Award conferred by the American Association for Cancer Research.

His continuous research on oncology enabled him to prove that cancer-causing agents induce tumours by activating oncogenes. This research line established the basis to identify oncogene as direct targets of cancer-causing agents. Later, when he has the executive director of the Department of Molecular Biology at the Bristol Myers-Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute in Princeton (New Jersey, USA), he identified the protein family Trk as a receptor for neurotrophins, a group growth factors that induce the survival of neurons. In 1998, Dr Barbacid came back to Spain and created, sponsored by the Institute of Health Carlos III, the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) with the aim of providing Spain with an excellent research centre on cancer that become an international model. Despite its short life, CNIO occupies the first position regarding scientific production in high-impact journals in Spain and around the world. He is member of many scientific associations, for instance the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the European Academy of Cancer Sciences and the Academy of Sciences of the Unites States. Furthermore, he has received many awards and honours, for example the Medal of Honour of the International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC) of the World Health Organization, headquartered in Lyon.

Alfred Goldberg, pioneer in the study of protein degradation

Professor Alfred Goldberg will be accompanied by the sponsoring professor Josep M. Argilès, from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Faculty of Biology and the Institute of Biomedicine of UB (IBUB). Alfred Goldberg (Providence, USA, 1942) is professor of cell biology at Harvard University, where he has developed his academic career. He got his degree in 1963 and his PhD in Physiology in 1968. He has been professor at Harvard Medical School since 1977.

His research has been centred on the biochemical mechanisms and the physiologic regulation of cell protein degradation and the important role that his process plays in many diseases. Proteins are produced constantly; then, they are broken down into amino acids. It is like a quality control in cells as this process eliminates damaged proteins. Godbergʼs laboratory discovered the dependent ATP (adenosine triphosphate) system for protein degradation, named ubiquitin-proteasome pathway. Moreover, he proved for the first time that proteasomes —protein complexes present in eukaryotic cells— are involved in protein degradation and he discovered ATP dependent proteases, a type of enzyme responsible for protein degradation in bacteria and mitochondria.

His basic research has played a crucial role in understanding human diseases. For instance, some of his finds are the relationship between the mechanisms of excessive protein degradation and muscle atrophy, and the function of proteasomes in antigen presentation, a key process of the immune system. Professor Goldbergʼs laboratory introduced proteasome inhibitors —which are now widely used as research tools— for the first time and started the studies that led to the development of the inhibitor Velcade (Bortezomib), used to treat some types of cancer.

Goldberg has published more than 400 scientific papers and is of the most quoted authors in life sciences publications. Moreover, he is member of prestigious institutions, for example the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. The relevance of his work has been recognized by many awards, including the Novartis-Drew Award for Biochemical Science, the Severo Ochoa Prize (New York University, USA) and the Ernst Knobil Prize for Medical Research (University of Texas, USA), among other distinctions.

The event also includes the award ceremony of the 17th Annual Prize for Doctoral Theses of UB. This year, John Jairo Aponte Varon, researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), receives the award for his PhD thesis Evaluación de herramientas para prevenir la malaria durante los primeros años de vida, defended at the Faculty of Medicine of UB and supervised by Pedro Alonso, professor from the Department of Public Health of UB.

John Jairo Aponte (Bogotá, Colombia, 1966) won the Ramon Margalef Prize conferred by the Board of Trustees of UB in 2012. The awarded study was issued as a recommendation for the control of malaria in infants by the World Health Organization: the intermittent treatment with antimalarial drugs in children (IPTi) with sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine. Nowadays, John Jairo Aponte continues researching on this issue. He is a CRESIB scientist, the research centre of ISGlobal, affiliated with HUBc, the health campus of international excellence of the UB.

The main goal of the Doctorsʼ Senate Award is to officially acknowledge those doctoral theses read and defended at UB which make particularly valuable contributions to scientific progress and the advancement of human knowledge. This year, theses read in 2011 have been awarded. There were a total of 118 candidates from different subject areas that covered nearly all of scientific and humanistic disciplines offered at UB.