Randy Schekman

Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology, UC Berkeley; HHMI Investigator. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2013 (with James Rothman and Thomas Südhof) — for discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic. Panelist at Session IV.

Current Obsessions

Extracellular Vesicles as Biomarkers

• Trillions of “little sentinels” in blood, carrying tissue-level information
• Startup detecting stage-one ovarian cancer by simultaneously reading three tumor antigens on individual particles across millions
• Diagnostics: genuinely excited; delivery: skeptical to dismissive — exosomes lack a fusogen, get internalized and degraded

Parkinson’s Disease — ASAP

• After his wife’s death from PD, approached by Sergey Brin’s family office (Brin carries genetic predisposition)
• ASAP (Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s) — 150+ lab international network; patient, hands-off, basic-science-first funding
• Design principle: lots of shots on goal; don’t repeat the amyloid mistake
• Work the >20 known familial PD genes; brightest near-term target: LRRK2

The Amyloid Cautionary Tale

• Amyloid plaques are removable — but removal does not reliably reduce dementia
• Most Alzheimer’s patients carry APOE4/APOE3 defects, not APP mutations
• The field spent decades and billions on the wrong frontier

“I was only interested in how yeast cells work. I didn’t care about human insulin. So my problem is I have no practical sense whatsoever.”