UB bestows an honorary doctorate on scientists Mariano Barbacid and Alfred Lewis Goldberg

Scientists Alfred Lewis Goldberg and Mariano Barbacid.
Scientists Alfred Lewis Goldberg and Mariano Barbacid.
Institutional
(26/06/2014)

Mariano Barbacid Montalbán, discoverer of human oncogenes, and Alfred Lewis Goldberg, expert on the study of the role that protein degradation plays in human diseases, received an honorary doctorate from the University of Barcelona on an institutional ceremony chaired by the rector, Dídac Ramírez i Sarrió, which took place today, 26 June, at the Paranymph Hall of the Historic Building of UB.

Scientists Alfred Lewis Goldberg and Mariano Barbacid.
Scientists Alfred Lewis Goldberg and Mariano Barbacid.
Institutional
26/06/2014

Mariano Barbacid Montalbán, discoverer of human oncogenes, and Alfred Lewis Goldberg, expert on the study of the role that protein degradation plays in human diseases, received an honorary doctorate from the University of Barcelona on an institutional ceremony chaired by the rector, Dídac Ramírez i Sarrió, which took place today, 26 June, at the Paranymph Hall of the Historic Building of UB.

On his speech, Dr Dídac Ramírez emphasized that scientists Barbacid and Goldberg “are an example of dedication and commitment to our main mission —knowledge generation— and a model for those researchers who have just received the special awards to PhD and master's degree students, and the award-winners of the 17th Annual Prize for Doctoral Theses of UB”.

“The University of Barcelona —remembered the Rector— aims to attain the international dimension of research achieved by the two scientists honoured today, who have collaborated with UB researchers in the fields of Medicine and Biology for many years”.

 

Mariano Barbacid, discoverer of human oncogenes

The nomination of Professor Mariano Barbacid, proposed by the Faculty of Medicine, was sponsored by José Luis Roca, tenured lecturer from the Department of Physiological Sciences II at 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. In 1974, Mariano Barbacid, who heads the Experimental Oncology Group at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO), joined the National Cancer Institute of the United States, where he developed his postdoctoral training.

On the sponsorʼs speech, Dr Rosa emphasized that “the excellent results he got during that period enabled him —when he was twenty-nine— to create his own research group at the Institute to study the molecular biology of human cancer. He obtained important results soon. In the spring of 1982, the group published the isolation of the first human oncogene in the journal Nature”. “The same year —he added—, the former journal published the identification of the first mutation associated with human cancer development. These finds, confirmed by two other independent research groups, established the molecular basis of human cancer”. Dr Roca also mentioned Barbacidʼs later works: “Research on carcinogenesis enabled him to prove at a molecular level that chemical carcinogens induce tumours by means of oncogene activation. This research line established the basis to identify oncogenes as important targets of carcinogenic agents”.

 

Barbacid researcher, Barbacid master

José Luis Rosa also remembered Barbacidʼs career at the Bristol Myers-Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute in Princeton (New Jersey, USA) and as head of the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO), one of the most important biomedical research centres around the world. The sponsoring professor also underlined that Barbacidʼs has been a teacher for many international scientists and he stressed his collaboration with different professors affiliated with UB.

On his speech, Mariano Barbacid recalled that “society does not understand why modern medicine, 21st century medicine, cannot overcome a high percentage of neoplastic diseases. Probably for that very reason society continues asking itself if one day we will be able to eradicate this disease”.

 

Mariano Barbacid: “there can be no progress without research”

“Cancer —highlighted Barbacid—, despite its singular name, it is not a single disease, but a group of diseases that do not share many things, except uncontrolled cell growth”. “Nowadays, we know that most tumours, particularly those with low survival index, accumulate hundreds of mutations that affect a great variety of cell processes”, detailed the expert. For that reason, he said, “the concept one patient, one tumour, one treatment is still far from being a reality, but modern oncology has already begun to go towards it”.

Barbacid remembered that it is key to support scientific research: “Paraphrasing Neil Armstrong —“a small step for a man, a giant leap for mankind”—, we can affirm that tumour genome sequencing, the identification of tumour mutations, is the small step that will enable us to make the giant leap, to make a major advance in the knowledge of neoplastic processes in order to treat them in the most rational way”. According to the scientist, “we must hope that science, sooner or later, will lead us to a better and more effective medicine”. “Only if we continue researching, we will be able to advance; we know it, but we usually ignore it, so we restrict the possibilities to attain a better world”, he alerted. To conclude, Barbacid highlighted that “there can be no progress without research”.


Alfred Goldberg, pioneer in the study of protein degradation

Professor Alfred Goldberg, pioneer in the study of protein degradation, was 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. 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.

 Goldbergʼs 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.

According to his sponsor, “Professor Goldberg is a Harvard man. For over forty years, Professor Goldberg has been a world leader in the field of degradation of muscle proteins. His contributions to science focus especially on the physiological pathways of protein degradation, one of the most complex fields of metabolism”.


The molecular machinery of protein degradation

“In Professor Goldbergʼs lab, they have studied why our bodies only break down damaged proteins and do not touch proteins that are working correctly. They have examined the importance of the protein degradation system in immune response and why in given pathological situations the degradation of muscle proteins is activated and how it can be halted”. Argilés also recalled Goldbergʼs major contribution to international studies that relate proteolytic function to ubiquitin and proteasome, remembering that the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2004 was awarded to the discoverers of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation involving proteasome.

On his speech, Goldberg affirmed: “My entry into the study of protein breakdown came out of some physiological studies I was doing as a student, investigating how muscles get smaller, if they are not used. No one seemed to know how the muscle became smaller, and it seemed to be a simple problem of how inactivity reduced protein synthesis, or so I thought”.

Professor Goldberg, who he figures among the top 1% of most frequently cited authors in biomedical research, proved that has also showed that the ubiquitin system is present in many diseases that lead to muscle wasting, such as chronic infection, acidosis and cancer. On his speech, he remarked that “Science is a team effort, and even if I may have initiated a project or guided it, I am always building on the wealth of concepts, facts, and methods developed by prior investigators. Biomedical knowledge is a pyramid and even those investigators whose work has a major impact, are only providing a small part of the construct”.

 

The event also included 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), received 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.