Peter Walter: 'This Honor Really Belongs to All of Us'
Lasker Award Winner Thanks Colleagues for Their Role in His Professional Success
More than a hundred colleagues, family and friends gathered Monday to celebrate Peter Walter, PhD, the recipient of the 2014 Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, one of the most prestigious honors in science and medicine.
He, and Kazutoshi Mori, PhD, a researcher at Kyoto University in Japan, are being honored for their groundbreaking work on a cellular quality-control system known as the unfolded protein response, or UPR, which is believed to play a role in neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, diabetes and other illnesses.
Peter Walter, far right, thanks colleagues for creating a "curiosity-driven discovery research" environment, as Chancellor Sam Hawgood, MBBS; School of Medicine Interim Dean Bruce Wintroub, MD; and Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics Chair Joe DeRisi, PhD, look on.
“I am deeply thrilled and actually quite overwhelmed receiving such prestigious recognition of our work,” said Walter, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at UC San Francisco, during a speech at Monday’s celebration held at Genentech Hall. “This is one of the marvelous benefits of such celebrations: to remind ourselves how we got here – that we’re surrounded by a decades-old recipe for success, and that it remains worth nurturing.”
This is Walter's second major award this year. He shared the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine in May with Mori for their discovery of UPR.
“The story of the UPR is a wonderful example of the value of curiosity-driven discovery research that, by advancing our most basic knowledge of how the cell works, in so many instances becomes the foundation for translational applications,” Walter said. “One of the values of receiving these awards is that we now have a little more of a soapbox to stand on and bring this message home.”
UCSF Vice Chancellor of Research Keith Yamamoto, PhD, and Peter Walter, PhD, share a moment at Genentech Hall.
Walter, 59, took Monday’s opportunity to acknowledge the nurturing and collaborative environment that greeted him when he joined UCSF in 1983.
“When I arrived here some 30 years ago, I was a naïve young assistant professor with absolutely no idea of how to run a lab or motivate students; I had no training or experience in genetics or structural biology, yet both areas played a most important role in the story we celebrate today,” he said. “I was welcomed by a wonderful community of colleagues: Reg Kelly, Bruce Alberts, Christine Guthrie, Carol Gross, Keith Yamamoto, Mike Bishop, Ira Herskowitz and many others, who provided invaluable mentoring, still continuing to this day.”
More than a hundred current and former colleagues gathered at Genentech Hall on Monday to listen to Peter Walter, PhD, thanking them for their role in him winning the 2014 Lasker Basic Medical Research Award.
Walter also recognized colleagues whose mentorship and input helped shape his career direction.
“Bob Stroud’s expertise was essential in helping us glean our current structural understanding, leading to paradigm changing insights, Kevan Shokat’s chemical tricks lit the way in understanding our unusual kinase, Jonathan Weissman expanded our scope with the latest genome-wide analyses,” Walter said. “Hana El-Samad, Joe DeRisi, and Hao Li stepped in to add a system biology perspective. Without Marc Shuman, we would have missed out on the many clinical connections that are now emerging and which we can readily and expertly follow-up with our outstanding clinical colleagues at UCSF. This community is just amazing.”
Vice Chancellor of Student Academic Affairs and Graduate Division Dean Elizabeth Watkins, PhD, congratulates Peter Walter, PhD.
Walter also thanked his family – parents, two daughters, and wife Patricia – for their unwavering support. He acknowledged the Lasker Award and the Shaw Prize would not have been possible without the collaboration of some 30 graduate students and postdoctoral students who worked in his lab over the past 20 years.
“They fearlessly pushed the field forward. I am deeply indebted to their courage and trust, walking along me on this meandering path of discovery,” he said. “This honor really belongs to all of us.”
Photos by Cindy Chew
Peter Walter, winner of the 2014 Lasker Award, stands with his wife Patricia Caldera-Muñoz and colleagues during a celebration in his honor at Genentech Hall on Monday.