Sidney Pestka, M.D.

2001 Milstein Award Laureate

USA

University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey

Dr. Pestka is known as the “Father of Interferon” for his seminal work on interferon that gave birth to what is, today, a $6 billion dollar market directed at the therapy of hepatitis, multiple sclerosis, cancer, and other diseases that affect mankind. He was the first to purify interferon, the first to clone mature interferons and the first to develop a commercialized recombinant biotherapeutic “Roferon A” while at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology of Hoffmann-La Roche. Dr. Pestka serves as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Molecular Genetics, Microbiology and Immunology at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, and is the Chief Scientific Officer at PBL InterferonSource. Named as inventor on 270 U.S. and foreign patents with 450 original research articles in his name, Dr. Pestka is a 2001 National Medal of Technology laureate and has received the 2004 Warren Alpert Foundation Scientific Prize from Harvard Medical School. He has also received the 2006 Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2009 Molecular Biology Medal, the National Institutes of Health and the 2010 Edward J.Ill Outstanding Medical Research Scientist Award for Basic Biomedical Research.  He graduated summa cum laude in chemistry from Princeton University and received a doctorate in Medicine from the University of Pennsylvania.