Ruslan Medzhitov, Ph.D.

Ruslan Medzhitov, Ph.D., the David W. Wallace Professor of Immunobiology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, has received the 2010 Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Science. The award was conferred for Medzhitov’s “elucidation of the mechanisms of innate immunity.” Medzhitov’s studies helped shed light on “the critical role of Toll-like receptors (TLRs) in sensing microbial infections, mechanisms of TLR signaling and activation of the inflammatory and immune response.” Rosensteil Awards are given to scientists for recent discoveries of particular originality and importance to basic medical research. A $30,000 prize and a medal accompany each award. Sharing the award for his work in innate immunity is Jules Hoffman, Ph.D., Research Director and Member of the Board of Administrators of the National Center of Scientific Research, University Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France.

Past Yale winners of the Rosenstiel Award include: in 2008, Arthur L. Horwich, M.D., Eugene Higgins Professor of Genetics and Pediatrics and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, for his work in the field of protein-mediated protein folding; in 2002, Joan A. Steitz, Ph.D., Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, for her work in establishing a subfield of molecular biology concerning small nuclear ribonucleoproteins; in 2001, Thomas A. Steitz, Ph.D., Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and Chemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, who later won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry; in 1989, Sidney Altman, Ph.D., Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, for discovering the catalytic properties of RNA. Altman won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry the same year.