Victor R. Ambros (born December 1, 1953) is an American
developmental biologist who discovered the first known
microRNA
Micro ribonucleic acid (microRNA, miRNA, μRNA) are small, single-stranded, non-coding RNA molecules containing 21–23 nucleotides. Found in plants, animals, and even some viruses, miRNAs are involved in RNA silencing and post-transcr ...
(miRNA). He is a professor at the
University of Massachusetts Medical School. He completed both his undergraduate and doctoral studies at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...
. Ambros received the
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine () is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, acco ...
in 2024 for his research on microRNA.
Biography
Early life and education
Ambros was born in
New Hampshire
New Hampshire ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...
. His father, Longin Ambros, attended
Sigismund Augustus Gymnasium in Vilnius 1937-1939 and was a
Polish World War II refugee. Victor grew up on a small dairy farm in
Hartland, Vermont, in a family of eight children and attended
Woodstock Union High School.
From the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...
, Ambros received a
Bachelor of Science
A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years.
The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...
with a major in biology in 1975 and a
Doctor of Philosophy
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 Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...
in biology in 1979. His doctoral supervisor was
David Baltimore
David Baltimore (born March 7, 1938) is an American biologist, university administrator, and 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine. He is a professor of biology at the California Institute of Tech ...
, a 1975
Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine. Ambros continued his research at MIT as the first postdoctoral fellow in the lab of future Nobel laureate
H. Robert Horvitz.
Career
Ambros became a faculty member at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
in 1984. However, Harvard denied tenure to Ambros shortly after he discovered what is now known as microRNA.
About this, Baltimore later said in 2008: "They lost a potential Nobel laureate because they simply didn’t see in him the potential that he had ... It’s the nature of a seminal discovery that it’s seminal in retrospect. You can’t know ahead of time."
Ambros joined the faculty of
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College ( ) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, Dartmouth is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the America ...
in 1992.
He joined the faculty at the
University of Massachusetts Medical School in 2008, and currently holds the title of Silverman Professor of Natural Sciences in the program in Molecular Medicine, endowed by his former Dartmouth student, Howard Scott Silverman.
Research
In 1993, Ambros and his co-workers
Rosalind Lee and
Rhonda Feinbaum reported in the journal ''
Cell''
that they had discovered single-stranded non-protein-coding regulatory
RNA
Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a polymeric molecule that is essential for most biological functions, either by performing the function itself (non-coding RNA) or by forming a template for the production of proteins (messenger RNA). RNA and deoxyrib ...
molecules in the organism
''C. elegans''. Previous research, including work by Ambros and Horvitz,
had revealed that a gene known as ''lin-4'' was important for normal larval development of ''C. elegans'', a nematode often studied as a model organism. Specifically, ''lin-4'' was responsible for the progressive repression of the protein
LIN-14 during larval development of the worm; mutant worms deficient in ''lin-4'' function had persistently high levels of LIN-14 and displayed developmental timing defects.
Ambros and colleagues found that ''lin-4'', unexpectedly, did not encode a regulatory protein. Instead, it gave rise to some small RNA molecules, 22 and 61 nucleotides in length, which Ambros called lin-4S (short) and lin-4L (long). Sequence analysis showed that lin-4S was part of lin-4L: lin-4L was predicted to form a stem-loop structure, with lin-4S contained in one of the arms, the 5' arm. Furthermore, Ambros, together with
Gary Ruvkun (Harvard), discovered that lin-4S was partially complementary to several sequences in the 3' untranslated region of the messenger RNA encoding the LIN-14 protein. Ambros and colleagues hypothesized and later determined that ''lin-4'' could regulate LIN-14 through binding of lin-4S to these sequences in the ''lin-14'' transcript in a type of antisense RNA mechanism.
In 2000, another ''C. elegans'' small RNA regulatory molecule,
let-7, was characterized by the Ruvkun lab and found to be conserved in many species, including vertebrates. These discoveries, among others, confirmed that Ambros had in fact discovered a class of small RNAs with conserved functions, now known as
microRNA
Micro ribonucleic acid (microRNA, miRNA, μRNA) are small, single-stranded, non-coding RNA molecules containing 21–23 nucleotides. Found in plants, animals, and even some viruses, miRNAs are involved in RNA silencing and post-transcr ...
.
Ambros was elected to the
United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, 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 Nati ...
in 2007.
He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011.
In 2024 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine with Gary Ruvkun "for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation".
Awards

* 2002:
Newcomb Cleveland Prize The Newcomb Cleveland Prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is annually awarded to author(s) of outstanding scientific paper published in the Research Articles or Reports sections of ''Science
Science is a ...
of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...
for the most outstanding paper published in ''
Science
Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...
(co-recipient with the laboratories of
David P. Bartel and
Thomas Tuschl)''
* 2004:
Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Medical Research of
Brandeis University
Brandeis University () is a Private university, private research university in Waltham, Massachusetts, United States. It is located within the Greater Boston area. Founded in 1948 as a nonsectarian, non-sectarian, coeducational university, Bra ...
(co-recipient with
Craig Mello,
Andrew Fire, and
Gary Ruvkun)
* 2006:
Genetics Society of America Medal for outstanding contributions in the past 15 years
* 2007: Elected to the
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 ...
* 2008:
Gairdner Foundation International Award (co-recipient)
* 2008:
Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science of The Franklin Institute (co-recipient with
Gary Ruvkun and
David Baulcombe)
* 2008: The
Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research (co-recipient with
Gary Ruvkun and
David Baulcombe)
* 2008: Massachusetts General Hospital Warren Triennial Prize (co-recipient with
Gary Ruvkun)
* 2009:
Dickson Prize from
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The university is composed of seventeen undergraduate and graduate schools and colle ...
in medicine
* 2009:
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 ...
(co-recipient with
Gary Ruvkun)
* 2009:
Massry Prize from
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...
(co-recipient with
Gary Ruvkun)
* 2012:
Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research from
Johnson & Johnson
Johnson & Johnson (J&J) is an American multinational pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical technologies corporation headquartered in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Its common stock is a c ...
(co-recipient with
Gary Ruvkun)
* 2013:
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 ...
from
Keio University (co-recipient with
Shigekazu Nagata)
* 2014:
Gruber Prize in Genetics from
Gruber Foundation (co-recipient with
Gary Ruvkun and
David Baulcombe)
* 2014:
Wolf Prize in Medicine from
Wolf Foundation (co-recipient with
Gary Ruvkun and
Nahum Sonenberg)
* 2015:
Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences
* 2016:
March of Dimes Prize in Developmental Biology (co-recipient with
Gary Ruvkun)
* 2024:
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine () is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, acco ...
(co-recipient with
Gary Ruvkun)
References
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ambros, Victor
Living people
American geneticists
American people of Polish descent
Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni
University of Massachusetts faculty
Harvard University faculty
Dartmouth College faculty
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Recipients of the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
1953 births
Massry Prize recipients
Benjamin Franklin Medal (Franklin Institute) laureates
American Nobel laureates
Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine