Photo courtesy of UCI
Biochemist and Nobel laureate Irwin “Ernie” Rose, PhD, has passed away at the age of 88.
Dr Rose and colleagues from Israel won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2004 for their discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation.
This research has wide-ranging implications for medicine and led to the development of anticancer drugs such as bortezomib, which is approved in the US to treat multiple myeloma and mantle cell lymphoma.
According to his friends and colleagues, Dr Rose was humble, generous, and endlessly curious.
“Ernie was not interested in personal fame and was oblivious to the politics of science,” said Ann Skalka, PhD, of Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
“His total satisfaction came from solving intricate biochemical puzzles. Although Ernie was an intellectual leader on the project that ultimately won him the Nobel, he took no personal credit. He was rather surprised at being recognized, but all of us at Fox Chase knew that the Nobel Committee had gotten it right.”
Dr Rose was born in Brooklyn, New York, on July 16, 1926. His scientific ambitions began to take shape after he moved to Spokane, Washington, at 13. While in high school, he spent summers working at a local hospital. And this inspired him to pursue a career that involved “solving medical problems.”
Dr Rose attended Washington State College for his undergraduate work and went on to earn a doctoral degree at the University of Chicago, after a brief stint in the Navy. He spent the better part of his career as a research scientist at the Fox Chase Cancer Center.
There, during the late 1970s and early 1980s, Dr Rose helped reveal how ubiquitin molecules facilitate the breakdown of old and damaged proteins. The discovery of this process fostered a new understanding of the molecular activity present in cancers and other diseases.
For the work, Dr Rose shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Avram Hershko, MD, PhD, and Aaron Ciechanover, MD, PhD, of the Israel Institute of Technology.
“Ernie had a genius for asking the right questions,” said Jonathan Chernoff, MD, PhD, of Fox Chase Cancer Center.
“In the mid-1950s, when many scientists were interested in how proteins are synthesized, Ernie became fascinated with the opposite issue—how are proteins degraded? With the collaboration of his Israeli colleagues, he cracked that problem with the discovery of the ubiquitin conjugating system.”
After retiring to Laguna Woods, California, in 1997, Dr Rose accepted a special research position with the University of California Irvine (UCI).
There, he studied the mechanisms of fumarase, an enzyme involved in the citric acid cycle, the cellular pathway by which higher organisms convert food into energy. And he quickly became a beloved colleague and mentor to students and faculty.
“[B]oth prior to and after winning the Nobel Prize, he would help any student or young postdoctoral researcher who was having a hard time with an experiment,” said Ralph Bradshaw, PhD, a former professor at UCI.
“It was a lot of fun working with him,” said James Nowick, PhD, of UCI. “He worked with his own hands, not relying on others, with old instrumentation, and was able to do literally superb science.”
“He was the quintessential scientist—perseverant, soft-spoken, and interested in science for science’s sake,” Dr Chernoff said. “We will miss him very much.”
Dr Rose died in his sleep on June 2 in Deerfield, Massachusetts. He is survived by his wife, Zelda; their sons, Howard, Frederic, and Robert; and 5 grandchildren. Dr Rose’s daughter, Sarah, died in 2005.
