From receptor research to cancer drug development: The impact of RTKs

When Joseph Schlessinger was a grad student at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, he was interested in biophysics.

“Then I realized that I wanted to study cells,” Schlessinger said, “so I did a postdoc at Cornell in the laboratories of Elliot Elson and the late Watt Webb where fluorescence correlation spectroscopy and photobleaching applications were developed to study receptor diffusion on cell membranes.”

Joseph Schlessinger

As he began to read about receptors, he found he was more interested in their biology than studying their motion.

“You can see, everything was sort of a relatively short-term plan, which turned out to be very productive in a way,” said Schlessinger, who now studies tyrosine phosphorylation, a mechanism for signal transduction in cells, and develops therapeutic drugs antagonizing the activity of tyrosine kinases in cancer and other diseases.

After stints at the Weizmann Institute and New York University, Schlessinger, who was born in former Yugoslavia at the end of World War II and moved to Israel as a child, joined the faculty at Yale University School of Medicine in 2001.

Schlessinger’s lab discovered how growth factor receptors with tyrosine kinase activity (receptor tyrosine kinases, or RTKs) are activated by dimerization and how they regulate cellular processes.

The lab’s studies provided the foundation to target cancer therapies against RTKs and downstream signaling intermediates, leading to the development of new cancer drugs.

Biotech companies founded by Schlessinger and collaborators have developed four Food and Drug Administration–approved cancer drugs among the 50 kinase inhibitors the lab developed for clinical use in treating cancer.

“In life, do not have a plan — just have fun learning new things,” Schlessinger said. “Throughout my career, I was just having fun with experiments. I think this makes it much more beautiful. I always go where the science takes me. And I always like to be ignorant of new topics I start letting science direct my research.”

For his work, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology will present Schlessinger with the 2025 ASBMB Herbert Tabor Research Award for outstanding, innovative accomplishments in biological chemistry and molecular biology and contributions to the community of scientists.