Hershko was born Herskó Ferenc in Karcag, Hungary, the son of Shoshana Margit and Moshe Hershko, both teachers. During the second world war, his father was forced into labor service in the Hungarian army and then taken as a prisoner by the Soviet army. For years Avram's family hadn't known anything about what happen to his father. Avram, his mother and older brother were put in a ghetto in Szolnok. At the final days of the ghetto, most Jews were sent to their deaths in Auschwitz, but Avram and his family managed to board trains that took them to a concentration camp in Austria, were they were forced into labor until the end of the war. Avram and his mother survived the war and returned to their home. His father returned as well, 4 years since they had seen him. Hershko and his family emigrated to Israel in 1950 and settled in Jerusalem. He received his M.D. in 1965 and his Ph.D in 1969 from the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem, Israel. He is currently a Distinguished Professor at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion in Haifa. Along with Aaron Ciechanover and Irwin Rose, he was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation. The ubiquitin-proteasome pathway has a critical role in maintaining the homeostasis of cells and is believed to be involved in the development and progression of diseases such as cancer, muscular and neurological diseases, and immune and inflammatory responses. His contributions to science directly helped cure one of his long-time friends of cancer.
2001 – Wolf Prize in Medicine, jointly with Alexander Varshavsky, for 'the discovery of the ubiquitin system of intracellular protein degradation and the crucial functions of this system in cellular regulation."
2004 – Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery with Aaron Ciechanover and Irwin Rose, of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation.
Publications
Hershko, A., Ciechanover, A., Heller, H., Haas, A.L., and Rose I.A. "Proposed role of ATP in protein breakdown: Conjugation of proteins with multiple chains of the polypeptide of ATP-dependent proteolysis". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 77, 1783–1786.
Hershko, A., Heller, H., Elias, S. and Ciechanover, A. Components of ubiquitin-protein ligase system: resolution, affinity purification and role in protein breakdown. J. Biol. Chem. 258, 8206–8214.
Hershko, A., Leshinsky, E., Ganoth, D. and Heller, H. ATP-dependent degradation of ubiquitin-protein conjugates. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 81, 1619–1623.
Hershko, A., Heller, H., Eytan, E. and Reiss, Y. The protein substrate binding site of the ubiquitin-protein ligase system. J. Biol. Chem. 261, 11992-11999.
Ganoth, D., Leshinsky, E., Eytan, E., and Hershko, A. A multicomponent system that degrades proteins conjugated to ubiquitin. Resolution of components and evidence for ATP-dependent complex formation. J. Biol. Chem. 263, 12412-1241.
Sudakin, V., Ganoth, D., Dahan, A., Heller, H., Hershko, J., Luca, F.C., Ruderman, J.V. and Hershko, A.. The cyclosome, a large complex containing cyclin-selective ubiquitin ligase activity, targets cyclins for destruction at the end of mitosis. Mol. Biol. Cell 6, 185–198.
Involvement with biotechnology
Professor Hershko serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of .
