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 located in the La Jolla community of San Diego, California, U.S. The independent, non-profit institute was founded in 1960 by Jonas Salk, the developer of the polio vacci ...

and the University of California San Diego. His research publications list his name as Tony Hunter.

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 constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college includes the Master, the Fellows of the College, and about 450 undergraduate and 170 graduate students. The college was founded by William Byngham in 1437 as ...

, where he was awarded a

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

in 1969 for research on

protein synthesis Protein biosynthesis (or protein synthesis) is a core biological process, occurring inside Cell (biology), cells, homeostasis, balancing the loss of cellular proteins (via Proteolysis, degradation or Protein targeting, export) through the product ...

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 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 The Shaw Prize is an annual award presented by the Shaw Prize Foundation. Established in 2002 in Hong Kong, it honours "individuals who are currently active in their respective fields and who have recently achieved distinguished and signifi ...

. 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, 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 The Charles S. Mott Prize was awarded annually by the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation as one of a trio of scientific prizes entirely devoted to cancer research, the other two being the Charles F. Kettering Prize and the Alfred P. Sloan, J ...

by the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation. * 1994 Gairdner Foundation International Award. * 1998 Member of the US

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 ...

. * 2001 Keio Medical Science Prize * 2004 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University. * 2005 Wolf Prize in Medicine * 2006 Pasarow Award 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 for "the most important ...

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