Guy Salvesen


Guy Salvesen is a South African-born biochemist, best known for his work in the field of apoptosis. His research focuses on proteases and their inhibitors in humans, with particular emphasis on the caspases of the apoptotic cell death pathway.
His PhD in biochemistry is from the University of Cambridge, studying under Alan Barrett. His first posts were at the Strangeways Research Laboratory and MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. In 1985, Salvesen moved to the USA, taking up a position at the University of Georgia. He joined the faculty of Duke University in 1987, and moved his laboratory to the Sanford-Burnham Institute for Medical Research, La Jolla, California in 1996.
As of 2007, Salvesen is the Program Director in Apoptosis and Cell Death Research at the Sanford-Burnham Institute. He also holds an Assistant Professorship at Duke University.
He serves as the Vice-Chair of the Biochemical Journal.
Guy and his wife, Anna Salvesen, have a son, Gabriel.

Key recent publications

Drag, M., Mikolajczyk, J., Krishnakumar, I. M., Huang, Z. and Salvesen, G. S. Activity profiling of human deSUMOylating enzymes with synthetic substrates suggests an unexpected specificity of two newly characterized members of the family. Biochem J 409, 461-469
Riedl, S. J. and Salvesen, G. S. The apoptosome: signalling platform of cell death. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 5, 405-413
Mikolajczyk, J., Drag, M., Bekes, M., Cao, J. T., Ronai, Z. and Salvesen, G. S. Small Ubiquitin-related Modifier -specific Proteases: Profiling The Specificities And Activities Of Human Senps. J Biol Chem 282, 26217-26224
Timmer, J. C., Enoksson, M., Wildfang, E., Zhu, W., Igarashi, Y., Denault, J. B., Ma, Y., Dummitt, B., Chang, Y. H., Mast, A. E., Eroshkin, A., Smith, J., Tao, W. A. and Salvesen, G. S. Profiling constitutive proteolytic events in vivo. Biochem J 407, 41-48