11月9日，2004年諾貝爾化學獎得主阿龍·切哈諾沃教授將開講首場“GTIIT-Technion科技領軍人物系列講座”。

以乳腺癌和前列腺癌為例，患有相似疾病的患者對類似療法反應不同，他們的病程也大不相同。最近我們開始意識到，我們所認為的同一種疾病的潛在分子機制，在不同的人身上是不一樣的。因此，乳腺癌或前列腺癌似乎可以根據其分子特征和引起突變的原因細分為不同類別。我們正在走出“一刀切”治療多種疾病的舊時代，進入“個性化醫療”的新時代，根據患者的分子/突變譜來定制治療方案。而這將伴隨著復雜的生物倫理問題，大量人口的遺傳信息將被獲取，隱私保護變得至關重要，基因編輯也需嚴格監管。最近的新冠疫情進一步加劇了倫理問題，反疫苗運動便是其中一個例子。

阿龍·切哈諾沃教授1947年出生于以色列海法市，是以色列理工學院杰出教授。他于1971年獲耶路撒冷市希伯萊大學理學碩士學位，1973年獲該校醫學博士學位。1973年至1976年間，他擔任軍隊醫生，隨后繼續在色列理工學院的醫學院學習深造，并獲得生物科學博士學位。在研究生階段，他與阿夫拉姆·赫什科博士、美國費城福克斯蔡斯癌癥中心的歐文·羅斯博士共同發現了泛素降解向目標蛋白質發出的共價連接信號，破譯了接合的機理，描述其中的一般蛋白水解功能，并提出模型表明這一變體為下游蛋白酶的識別信號。隨后在麻省理工大學哈維·羅迪西博士的帶領下從事博士后研究，期間他繼續研究泛素系統，并取得了其他一些重大發現。多年研究表明，泛素介導的蛋白降解途徑在細胞變化過程中起到重要作用，系統的畸變也是導致很多病變的致病機理，包括惡性腫瘤和神經退行性疾病。因此，該系統已經成為藥物開發的一個重要平臺。

阿龍·切哈諾沃教授獲得眾多獎項和榮譽，包括2000年度Albert Lasker獎、2003年度以色列獎章，并與赫什博士和羅斯博士共同獲得2004年度諾貝爾化學獎。同時，他在眾多學術機構中均有任職，目前是以色列國家科學人文學院的成員，并在美國藝術與科學院、美國哲學協會、美國國家科學院、醫學研究所任外籍研究員，也是梵蒂岡宗座科學院、中國科學院和俄羅斯科學院的外籍院士。

The first lecture this year is delivered by Nobel Prize Laureate (Chemistry 2004) Prof. Aaron Ciechanover, entitled The Road Between Patients and Curative Medical Technologies is Strewn with Bioethical Bumps: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond.

The realization that patients with apparently similar diseases – breast or prostate cancer, for example - respond differently to similar treatments and their disease course differ vastly, we have recently begun to understand that the underlying molecular mechanisms of what we thought is the same disease, are different in different people. Thus, breast or prostate cancers appear to be sub-divided to smaller distinct classes according to their molecular characteristics and the causing mutations. As a result, we are exiting now the era where the treatment of many diseases is "one size fits all", and enter a new era of "personalized medicine" where the treatment will be tailored according to the patient's

molecular/mutational profile. The era will be accompanied by complex bioethical problems. Among them is that genetic information of large populations will become available, protection of privacy will become an important issue, and gene editing will have to be tightly regulated. The ethical issues have been accentuated along the recent pandemic, and one example is of course the anti-vaccination movement.

Prof. Aaron Ciechanover was born in Haifa, Israel in 1947. He is a distinguished research professor at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. He received his M.Sc. (1971) and M.D. (1973) from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He then completed his national service (1973-1976) as a military physician, after which he continued his studies and obtained his doctorate degree in biological sciences in the Faculty of Medicine in the Technion (D.Sc. 1982). At that time, Prof. Aaron Ciechanover was a graduate student under Dr. Avram Hershko and in collaboration with Dr. Irwin A. Rose from the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, USA, when they discovered that covalent attachment of ubiquitin to a target protein signals it for degradation. After deciphering the mechanism of conjugation, they described the general proteolytic functions of the system and proposed a model according to which this modification serves as a recognition signal for a specific downstream protease. As a post-doctoral fellow with Dr. Harvey Lodish at the M.I.T., he continued his studies on the ubiquitin system and made additional important discoveries. Along the years it has become clear that ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis plays major roles in numerous cellular processes, and aberrations in the system underlie the pathogenetic mechanisms of many diseases, among them certain malignancies and neurodegenerative disorders. Consequently, the system has become an important platform for drug development.

Among the numerous prizes Ciechanover has received are the 2000 Albert Lasker Award, the 2003 Israel Prize, and the 2004 Nobel Prize (Chemistry; shared with Drs. Hershko and Rose). Among many academies, Ciechanover is member of the Israeli National Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Foreign Fellow), the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Sciences of the USA and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of the USA (Foreign Associate), the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at the Vatican, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS; Foreign Member), and the Russian Academy of Sciences (Foreign Member).