John Rubinstein elected to prestigious Royal Society

Dr. John Rubinstein, a Senior Scientist at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), has been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society for his scientific contributions in developing new methods to study protein structures at high resolution — and applying these methods to answer longstanding biological questions.  

The UK's national academy of sciences, the Royal Society was founded in 1660 and is the world’s oldest continuously operating scientific association. It is dedicated to promoting scientific excellence and encouraging the use of science for the benefit of humanity. History's most eminent scientists make up the Fellowship of the Royal Society, who are elected based on their contributions to science, mathematics and engineering.  

“It is a tremendous honour to receive this recognition,” says Rubinstein. “I am indebted to the many talented researchers, especially graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, with whom I’ve collaborated to do this research.” 

Textbook discoveries in molecular imaging 

Since 2006, Rubinstein’s lab in the Molecular Medicine program at SickKids has pushed the use of single particle electron cryomicroscopy (cryo-EM) to higher and higher resolution, thereby advancing our collective ability to study the structure of biological molecules — including the most important ones in our body.  

Rubinstein and his team are experts in the study of membrane proteins, which are essential to how cells interact with each other and their environment. More than half of all drugs are designed to target membrane proteins, but determining their structures was a formidable challenge until the advent of the methods that Rubinstein helped to develop.  

“To understand life at a molecular level we must be able to see the 3D structures of the proteins and protein complexes that carry out biological processes in cells,” he says. “Viewing them clearly enough to determine the position of individual atoms allows us to design all-new medicines.”   

His team has used cryo-EM to reveal the atomic structure and function of essential enzymes including ATP synthase, the main energy currency for cells, and V-type ATPase, which controls their pH levels. Nearly all cellular functions depend on these proteins.  

Several structures that Rubinstein’s team determined are now featured in biochemistry and cell biology textbooks. 

World-leading insights into tuberculosis  

In recent years, Rubinstein has used his cryo-EM expertise to support the search for new drugs to treat tuberculosis (TB), which is increasingly resistant to available medicines. He is collaborating with biologists, drug-discovery experts and medicinal chemists to develop new precision therapeutics for TB as well as non-TB mycobacterial infections. 

This past March, his team published a study that revealed the structure of a protein that Myocobacterium tuberculosis uses to survive in infected lung tissue — as well as the first lab test to measure the protein’s activity. The result: a new target for next generation drug therapy. In a 2020 paper in Nature, his team demonstrated exactly how a current cornerstone treatment for drug-resistant TB functions, which was previously unknown.  

These are only two stories of his work advancing efforts to address “the world’s top infectious killer.”  

The Royal Society’s location in London is just 100 km south of Cambridge University, where Rubinstein earned a PhD under the supervision of Nobel laureates Sir John E. Walker and Dr. Richard Henderson. After serving as a postdoctoral fellow with them in the UK’s Medical Research Council laboratories, Rubinstein returned to Canada and founded his research group at SickKids in 2006. . 

A professor in the Departments of Biochemistry and Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto, he received an honorary doctorate from Stockholm University in 2022 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2024. 

See the full list of 2026 Fellows in the Royal Society’s announcement.