Nobel Prize winner gives lecture at Northwest University

Randy Sheckman, a Nobel Prize winner in physiology or medicine and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, attended the seventh lecture of Northwest University's "Nobel Prize Forum" on March 11 and gave a special report entitled how cells export proteins by Cultured Human Cells.

Guo Lihong, president of Northwest University, awards an honorary professorship to Professor Shechmann. [Photo by Ma Qian and Wang Bochen/ chinadaily.com.cn]

In his report, Sheckman described his research and exploration process and his landmark achievements. Using yeast as a model, he revealed the molecular mechanisms of vesicle formation, transport-related genes and vesicle transport, cell membrane fusion, and protein secretion by biochemical and genetic means, which provided basic data and theoretical support for subsequent cancer research, insulin and hepatitis B vaccine production.

Schekman won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2013 and is an academician of the National Academy of Sciences, a professor of molecular and cellular biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a researcher at the Howard Hughes Institute of Medicine.

His main fields are clinical drug therapy for tumors, research on new antineoplastic drugs, the etiology of tumors, molecular biology and the metastasis mechanism of tumors, cancer immunity, stem cell research, nervous system diseases, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, biological artificial intelligence and yeast research.

Northwest University, one of the key national universities in Xi'an City, Shaanxi province, established the Nobel Prize Forum in October 2017. Over the past year, seven Nobel Prize scholars have been invited to give lectures and two Nobel Prize studios have been set up.

During the event on Monday, Wang Yajie, secretary of the Party Committee of Northwest University, and Professor Shechmann jointly unveiled the Nobel Prize studio.

And Guo Lihong, president of Northwest University, awarded Shechmann with an honorary professorship of Northwest University.