Etcetera

Julius Rebek Awarded Prelog Medal

Scripps Research Institute Professor Julius Rebek has been awarded the Prelog Medal, presented by the Laboratory of Organic Chemistry (LOC) with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.

Rebek, director of the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), is being recognized for his fundamental discoveries in stereochemistry, according to the award announcement. He will present the Prelog Medal Lecture, “Molecular Behavior in Small Spaces,” at an awards ceremony on Monday, November 5, at the LOC in Zurich.

Awarded annually since 1986, the Prelog Medal is named after Vladimir Prelog, a Swiss chemist of Croatian origin who—with John W. Cornforth—received the 1975 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on the stereochemistry of organic molecules and reactions.

Antonio Amelio Receives Pathway to Independence Award in Cancer Research

The career of Antonio (Tony) Amelio, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Cancer Biology at TSRI, has gotten a boost from the National Institutes of Health in the form of a Howard Temin Pathway to Independence Award in Cancer Research. The multiyear award from the National Cancer Institute—worth around $1 million over five years—is designed to accelerate the progress of promising junior scientists to scientific independence.

The Pathway to Independence Award is split into two phases. The initial phase provides one to two years of mentored support for postdoctoral fellows; the next phase is three years of independent support contingent on securing an independent tenure-track or equivalent research position. The National Institutes of Health issues only between 150 and 200 of these awards per year, making them highly competitive and relatively rare.

Amelio, who completed his graduate work at the University of Florida College of Medicine and has been mentored in the Scripps Florida laboratories of Assistant Professor Michael Conkright and Department of Cancer Biology Chair John Cleveland, is, understandably, excited. He’s grateful, too, that during an interruption in the grant review process due to gridlock over the federal budget, the Scripps Florida Department of Philanthropy and the local PGA National Women’s Cancer Awareness Day in nearby Palm Beach Gardens stepped in to support him.

Amelio’s research has been focused on the cell signaling proteins CREB and the CRTC coactivators. His current work bridges these studies and investigations in the Cleveland lab on a cancer-causing gene known as MYC (activated in up to 70 percent of all cancers) in human B cell lymphoma and leukemia to create his own independent research program. He hopes to decipher the role of the CREB and the CRTCs (which regulate key aspects of cell survival) in cooperating with the pathway of MYC to drive the creation and progression of tumors.

Send comments to: mikaono[at]scripps.edu

Professor Julius Rebek is being recognized for his fundamental discoveries in stereochemistry. (Photo by Micheal Balderas.)

Postdoctoral Fellow Antonio Amelio has won a Howard Temin Pathway to Independence Award in Cancer Research, designed to accelerate the progress of promising junior scientists to scientific independence. (Photo by Barbara S. Noble.)

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Etcetera

Julius Rebek Awarded Prelog Medal

Antonio Amelio Receives Pathway to Independence Award in Cancer Research