Young scientists need to have curiosity, passion: 2004 Nobel Laureate Aaron Ciechanover – Transcript

00:00the globally young scientists summit organized by the National Research Foundation starts tomorrow in Singapore now it's a gathering of leaders and researchers from the scientific community worldwide one of the topics on tomorrow's agenda decoding genetic information embedded in our DNA and Professor Aaron chicken over is a Nobel laureate in chemistry for discovering the key role of a small protein called

00:27ubiquity thank you very much I'm a doctor chicken over for coming in so since your groundbreaking discovery scientists have found that the defects in the ubiquitin system it's actually linked to cancer neo degenerative disc neurodegenerative disorders and other illnesses and because of that they've also managed to undeveloped drugs to help countless people worldwide you know it's a great discovery what actually led

00:52you to study protein degradation back then well coming from Israel a small country at the time that I started my studies it was also relatively poor country and in science science is the Merciless a profession we had to compete with the big American shark or the big European shark so we decided to swim the opposite direction other than working on protein synthesis from the genetic code that was fashionable at the time we

01:18decided to go the other way and that's destruction how proteins are destroyed many people didn't believe that it's important we have some science that it is important and the fact is that he turned out to be awfully important that's right so what kind of a role does personalized medicine actually play in on today's world then what personalized medicine is a big revolution that is based on basically on our own chemical composition it based on our DNA and

01:45there on our RNA in our proteins and this is aberrations in one of these components leads to diseases until now we treated patients according to the disease if a patient had a breast cancer for example or prostate cancer we he radiated it we operated on the patient now we want to understand why it happened and it turns out that it's due to some mutation and for a woman certain woman it would be a mutation

02:11a and for other woman it will be a mutation in gene B and for the third woman it will be a different mutation the presentation will be a tumor in the breast but the underlying mechanism is different and therefore the treatment should be designed accordingly it will not be one-size-fits-all we are moving from a pyjama type of treatment that pajama fits all sizes into such type right of medicine well okay speaking of

02:38that you know you've once also said that you did signs because of scientific curiosity and not to actually win prizes you know but you obviously did win a prize but what sparked your interest in science then curiosity just curiosity understanding basic mechanisms of the normal human body and then of diseases the only way to develop a drug or to develop a device that he'd be imaging

03:04cat scan MRI anything is understanding the basic mechanism and I am a physician so I started with medicine and I thought that medicine is too late once you have a patient to treat with a disease it's too late it is it is already there I wanted to understand the underlying mechanism how diseases start at the very beginning and then to develop drugs and then to prevent diseases and so on and so forth so for me

03:31it was mere curiosity so you want to start at the very beginning to nip it in the bud before it's too late right but you've also worked with mentors you know you've worked with your mentor professor of ROM as well as urban rose how important do you would you say that mentorship and collaboration are to use scientific research critically important it's like a friendship it's like all right it's like playing a violin you

03:56need to see how people are thinking how they conceive ideas how they approach problems how they solve problems and then if you're a good student and I assume I want to believe I was and you learned from them it's like surgery it's like any other art science in many ways is an art so what would you say would make a good scientist and you know for tomorrow's of event what do you hope that

04:24the young scientists will take away from it well there are many elements like we just talked about one we talked about mentorship but for me I think and of course you're in luck you need to be likely you know but the most critically important one is passion you need to be passionate of what you are doing you need to really love not to look at the clock just to do it out of devotion if you are not passionate leave it for somebody else well like you say you know

04:51your out of curiosity you did it not to win prizes but you did win a prize came very late even for a moment well congratulations and thank you for coming in and speaking to us within speaking with Professor Aaron chica Nova 2004 Nobel laureate in chemistry thank you