There’s no way to rush a COVID-19 vaccine, according to Nobel Laureate Professor Aaron Ciechanover. “In the end we shall develop [a vaccine]. There is no doubt about it, but the way, it’s very long and we have to test every step and make sure before we move to the next one, because lives of people are at stake.”
Professor Ciechanover made the comments in a recent Academy webinar, held in partnership with Technion Australia and the Embassy of Israel Canberra.
The webinar was held to celebrate Australia and Israel’s bilateral science, research and innovation relationship, which is underpinned by the Australia–Israel Agreement on Bilateral Cooperation in Technological Innovation and Research and Development that was announced in 2017 and came into force in 2018.
In conversation with Academy Chief Executive Anna-Maria Arabia, Professor Ciechanover discussed the future of medicine and cancer research, Israel’s unique entrepreneurial ecosystem, and his own personal journey to winning a Nobel Prize.
In 2004, Professor Ciechanover, together with Professor Avram Hershko and Professor Irwin Rose, received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery of the ubiquitin protein. The treatment of cancers and degenerative diseases was transformed by the discovery of how ubiquitin removes unwanted proteins.
“It started with a laboratory in Israel, in some vague idea. It now has become a huge stream of knowledge, pharmaceutical company scientists work on it all over the world. [Did] we know it? No, of course not at the beginning, you’re busy with your problem. We knew that what we are finding is novel, but we didn’t know that it’s important.”
Read the media release from the Australian Academy of Science.