C. Ronald Kahn
Wolf Prize Laureate in Medicine 2016
C. Ronald Kahn
Affiliation at the time of the award:
Harvard Medical School, USA
Award Citation:
“for pioneering studies defining insulin signaling and its alterations in disease.”
Prize Share:
C. Ronald Kahn
Lewis Cantley
Kahn’s work has been a key to elucidating the pathogenesis of type II diabetes. His observation that the insulin receptor transmits insulin signals through activation of an intrinsic protein tyrosine kinase was the first step in unraveling the insulin signaling cascade. Thesestudies formed that basis of our present detailed understanding of the pathogenesis of insulin resistance, and in contemporaneous clinical studies, Kahn showed that insulin resistance precedes and leads to type II diabetes.