DEERFIELD, Mass. (AP) - Irwin Rose, a biochemist who shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in chemistry for discovering a way that cells destroy unwanted proteins - a key for developing new cancer therapies - has died. He was 88.
Janet Wilson of the University of California, Irvine - where Rose was a researcher - says Rose died in his sleep Tuesday in Deerfield, Massachusetts.
Rose - along with Israelis Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko - discovered how plant and animal cells use a chemical "kiss-of-death" to mark old and damaged proteins so they can be destroyed.
Rose did the Nobel work during his career at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.
He became a UCI researcher after retiring in 1997.