On October 28, 2015, Tony Hunter, a member of the National Academy of Sciences of America and a professor at the American Cancer Society, was invited to the 39th session of “SUSTC Lecture” for a presentation. He introduced the process of protein phosphorylation discovery and its important molecular function to the students and teachers of South University of Science and Technology of China (SUSTC) present. Wu Chuanyue, vice president of SUSTC and Prof. Zhang Xumu, dean of the Department of Chemistry presided over the presentation.

Academician Tony Hunter

Hunter is director of the Cancer Research Center of Salk Institute, a renowned US biological research institution. He has won a collection of prestigious international biomedical awards, including Wolf Prize and Gairdner Award. In 2012, Thomson Reuters predicted him to be a Nobel Prize favorite. As the discoverer of protein tyrosine phosphorylation, one of the most distinguished experts at cell signal transduction, as well as a key founder of drug target protein Kinase, he was hailed as “Kinase King”. His research findings led to the discovery of over 10 important anti-cancer drugs, of which the most famous is Gleevec.

Presentation scene

In a presentation lasting nearly 90 minutes, Hunter started with his discovery of protein tyrosine phosphorylation, and elaborated on its key molecular function in the process of cell signal transduction, to offer nearly 100 teachers and students full knowledge of the important regulation mechanism of the important “molecular machine”–protein phosphorylation in numerous serious diseases, especially in cancers. Though over 70, he remains highly enthusiastic about cell signal transduction research. In the presentation, he introduced the latest research findings of histidine phosphorylation his research team has recently published on the top biological magazine Cell. He also introduced the cooperative research on proteomics against pancreatic cancer with Tian Ruijun, an associate professor at the Department of Chemistry, SUSTC, and expounded that systematic molecular mechanism research is likely to bring new therapeutic regimes and early detection means to clinical treatment by cases.

Wu Chuanyue, vice president of SUSTC, presided over the presentation