Singapore: Dr Irwin Rose, an American biologist, who shared Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2004 for the discovery of cell behaviour of destroying unwanted protien, died at the age of 88.

Dr Rose and his team discovered the ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation that later became the foundation for new therapies for diseases including cystic fibrosis and cervical cancer.

Scientists have been trying to use the process to create medicines, either to prevent the breakdown of proteins or make the cell destroy disease-causing ones.

Dr Rose was born in Brooklyn, New York, on July 16, 1926, and spent much of his career as a researcher at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. His Nobel-winning work was done there in the late 1970s and the early 1980s.