Professor Hugh R. Pelham
King Faisal Prize in Science 1996 Laureate
Topic: "Biology "
Progress in science often depends on the efforts of many people, and I have had the pleasure of working with excellent colleagues over the years
Hugh Pelham received his bachelor’s degree (Honors) and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Cambridge University and served as a researcher at Cambridge before moving to the United Stated for a two-year fellowship at the Carnegie Institution in Washington’s Department of Embryology in Baltimore, Maryland. Following his return, he held research positions at the Medical Research Council (MRC) in Cambridge and the Molecular Biology Institute at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. Between 1992-1995, he was appointed as a Co-Director of the Cell Biology Division of the MRC Molecular Biology Laboratory, where he is also currently Head of the Division of Cell Biology.
Professor Pelham conducted seminal research on the regulation of intracellular molecular traffic. Pelham also illustrated the mechanisms for the retrieval and retention of proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum of the cell. In a series of elegant experiments, he showed that a terminal four-amino acid sequence was the factor that kept a protein in the endoplasmic reticulum. He proved that the signal was required to retain rather than export the protein through its retrieval from the Golgi complex as part of the general movement of proteins within the cell. He also identified the gene that determined the specificity of this retention system in yeast cells, and isolated the human analog of that gene. Currently, Professor Pellham and his group are looking at how proteins find their right places in the cell and how mis-shaped proteins are broken down for recycling.
Professor Pelham’s outstanding contributions appeared in more than 100 scientific papers, and earned him wide recognition and several prestigious awards. He was awarded the Louis Jeantet Prize in Medicine and the Colworth Medal of the Biochemical Society. He was also elected as a Fellow of the prestigious Royal Society (London) and Academia Europaea, and a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization as well as the editorial boards of several major scientific journals.
This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.
- He held many positions including:
- Director of the Medical Research Council at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England between 2006 and 2018.
- Honorary Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Cambridge in 2015.