The Signal Transduction Society (STS) held their 14th annual meeting in Wiemar, Germany, last week. A major highlight was the award of the STS medal to Professor Anthony James Pawson, for his outstanding contributions to the field of signal transduction research. Whilst remaining at the forefront of cell and molecular biological research, Tony is an active Editorial Board Member of  the society journal, Cell Communication and Signaling, as well as BioMed Central’s flagship publication, BMC Biology.

Originally from Maidstone, UK, Tony studied for an MA in Biochemistry at Cambridge with Nobel laureate Tim Hunt. After his PhD at Kings College London, Tony moved to the US before starting his own lab in Canada in 1981. He began seminal work on tyrosine kinase, leading to the first report of SH2 interaction domains in 1986. This discovery paved the way for detailed understanding of the control of cell growth pathways by oncogenes.

In his award lecture, Tony described his more recent research into how complex structures are formed from simpler components. By looking at the evolution of protein-protein interaction domains, we can see how small changes in catalytic activity can make dramatic changes to the dynamic state of the cell. We would like to congratulate Tony on his latest award and look forward to seeing his new work published in Cell Communication and Signaling.