His close collaboration with Yale faculty colleague Peter Moore and interactions with William Jorgenson led to the establishment of Rib-X Pharmaceutical, Inc., which is using this knowledge of the structures of the large ribosomal subunit and its antibiotic complexes to create new classes of antibiotics.

Dr. Steitz, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, shares the $1.4 million award with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, United Kingdom and Ada E. Yonath, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot. All three used a technology called X-ray crystallography to map the position for each and every one of the hundreds of thousands of atoms that make up the ribosome. The knowledge of the ribosome has created targets for a new generation of antibiotics.

"Rib-X would like to extend its congratulations to Drs. Steitz, Ramakrishnan and Yonath on receiving the most esteemed award for scientific endeavors and accomplishments,” said Dr. Susan Froshauer, President and Chief Executive Officer, Rib-X. "As one of our co-founders, Dr. Steitz recognized the importance of the ribosome early on, and he continues to perform a valuable role to us as the Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board.”

“I am excited by the prospect that our work on the structure of the ribosome and mechanisms of antibiotic binding is leading to potential new chemical classes which have the potential to treat a wide variety of multi-drug resistant bacterial infections,” commented Dr. Steitz.  

Dr. Peter Moore, Sterling Professor of Chemistry at Yale University and Dr. Harry Noller, Robert Louis Sinsheimer Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, also co-founders and part of Rib-X’s Scientific Advisory Board, have worked closely with Dr. Steitz; together they received the Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Sciences for their research on the ribosome in 2001.  

Rib-X was built on the extraordinary science of these founders and utilizes this award winning knowledge of the structure and function of the ribosome.  Their hard work has yielded several distinctive new antibiotics that can be used for the treatment of multi-antibiotic resistant infections.  These include three programs – radezolid, Rχ-04 and Rχ-02 – that are derived from Rib-X’s proprietary discovery engine. 

Radezolid is a late stage Phase 2 novel oxazolidinone designed to expand the bacterial spectrum and improve the utility of this class of antibiotics relative to the only other oxazolidinone marketed in the world, Zyvox® (linezolid).  Additional programs include Rχ-04, which employs a de novo approach to develop novel antibiotics that are active against multi-drug resistant Gram-negative bacteria and Rχ-02, which is focused on engineering novel macrolides that have demonstrated activity against known bacterial resistance mechanisms and have also demonstrated activity against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

Dr. Steitz was selected by the Nobel Prize Committee for his research on using X-ray crystallography to map the position for each and every one of the hundreds of thousands of atoms that make up the ribosome. Dr. Steitz focused on a subunit of the ribosome, which has proved to be a major target for antibiotics. By generating 3D models that show how different antibiotics bind to the ribosome, scientists can now develop new antibiotics.

Dr. Steitz was born in 1940 in Milwaukee and received a degree in molecular biology and biochemistry in 1966 from Harvard University.