Anthony Rex Hunter (born 23 August 1943) is a British-American biologist who is a professor of biology at the

Salk Institute for Biological Studies The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is a scientific research institute in the La Jolla community of San Diego, California. The independent, non-profit institute was founded in 1960 by Jonas Salk, the developer of the polio vaccine; among th ...

and the

University of California San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Es ...

. His research publications list his name as Tony Hunter. Professor Hunter is an elected member of the UK's

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

and the USA's

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

Early life and education

Hunter was born in 1943 in the United Kingdom and educated at Felsted School, prior to

Christ's College, Cambridge Christ's College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college includes the Master, the Fellows of the College, and about 450 undergraduate and 250 graduate students. The c ...

, where he was awarded a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in 1969 for research on

protein synthesis Protein biosynthesis, or protein synthesis, is a core biological process, occurring inside cells, balancing the loss of cellular proteins (via degradation or export) through the production of new proteins. Proteins perform a number of critica ...

Career and research

Following his PhD, Hunter held a fellowship at

, in Cambridge (1968–1971) and (1973–1975). From 1971 to 1973, he was a

postdoctoral research A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). Postdocs most commonly, but not always, have a temporary acade ...

associate of the

in La Jolla, California. He was then assistant professor 1975–78, associate professor 1978–82, professor 1982 onwards and since 2008 director of the Salk Institute Cancer Center. He also sits on the Selection Committee for Life Science and Medicine which chooses winners of the Shaw Prize. Hunter is one of the foremost recognized leaders in the field of cell growth control, growth factor receptors and their signal transduction pathways. He is well known for discovering that tyrosine phosphorylation is a fundamental mechanism for transmembrane-signal transduction in response to growth factor stimulation and that disregulation of such tyrosine phosphorylation, by activated oncogenic protein

tyrosine kinases -Tyrosine or tyrosine (symbol Tyr or Y) or 4-hydroxyphenylalanine is one of the 20 standard amino acids that are used by cells to synthesize proteins. It is a conditionally essential amino acid with a polar side group. The word "tyrosine" is ...

, is a pivotal mechanism utilized in the malignant transformation of cells. His work is important in signaling pathways and their disorders. Hunter was a founder of Signal Pharmaceuticals.

Awards and honors

He won the Wolf Prize in Medicine in 2005 for "the discovery of protein kinases that phosphorylate tyrosine residues in proteins, critical for the regulation of a wide variety of cellular events, including malignant transformation". He has been granted along with Charles Sawyers and Joseph Schlessinger with the 2014 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Biomedicine category for "carving out the path that led to the development of a new class of successful cancer drugs". * 1987 Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) * 1994 Charles S. Mott Prize by the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation. * 1994 Gairdner Foundation International Award. * 1998 Member of the US

. * 2001

Keio Medical Science Prize The Keio Medical Science Prize ( Japanese: 慶應医学賞) is a Japanese prize in medical sciences. Introduction The prize is awarded to scientists who made significant contributions to the field of medical sciences or life sciences. And these c ...

* 2004

Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize The Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize for Biology or Biochemistry is an annual prize awarded by Columbia University to a researcher or group of researchers who have made an outstanding contribution in basic research in the fields of biology or biochemist ...

from

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

. * 2005 Wolf Prize in Medicine * 2006

Pasarow Award The Robert J. And Claire Pasarow Foundation Medical Research Awards were awarded annually for distinguished accomplishment in areas of investigation that included neuropsychiatry, cardiovascular disease, and cancer research. The program ran from 1 ...

in Cancer Research. * 2014

Royal Medal The Royal Medal, also known as The Queen's Medal and The King's Medal (depending on the gender of the monarch at the time of the award), is a silver-gilt medal, of which three are awarded each year by the Royal Society. Two are given for "the mo ...

* 2014 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine * 2017 Sjöberg Prize for Cancer Research * 2018

Tang Prize The Tang Prize ( zh, c=唐獎) is a set of Taiwanese biennial international awards bestowed in four fields: Sustainable Development, Biopharmaceutical Science, Sinology, and Rule of Law. Nomination and selection are conducted by an independent se ...

* 2018 Pezcoller Foundation-AACR International Award for Cancer Research

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hunter, Anthony R. 1943 births Living people University of California, San Diego faculty Wolf Prize in Medicine laureates Fellows of the Royal Society Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences 21st-century American biologists Fellows of the AACR Academy Salk Institute for Biological Studies people Members of the National Academy of Medicine