- Person
- Robert Lefkowitz
- Lived
- b. 1943
- Field
- Biochemistry, cardiology
- From
- American
The story
Robert Lefkowitz was born in the Bronx in 1943; all four of his grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. He trained as a physician at Columbia University and in 1968 joined the National Institutes of Health, where he was asked to find a way to detect hormone receptors. At the time many scientists doubted that receptors existed as real molecules; they were an idea used to explain how hormones and drugs affect cells.
In 1971 Lefkowitz chose to study the beta-adrenergic receptor, which responds to adrenaline and makes the heart beat faster. The first beta blocker had recently been approved in the United States, and many drugs acting on the receptor were available to turn into research tools. After moving to Duke University in 1973, he and Marc Caron developed in 1974 a radioactive drug that attached specifically to the receptor, allowing it to be measured directly. His team then purified the receptor and, in the early 1980s, placed it into cells that normally ignore adrenaline, which then began to respond. 'That really did it for people,' he recalled.
In the mid-1980s his group, including the young fellow Brian Kobilka, cloned the receptor's gene. The protein wound back and forth through the cell membrane seven times, just like rhodopsin, the light receptor of the eye. That revealed a huge family, now called G protein-coupled receptors, of which humans have about a thousand, including receptors for light, smell, taste, histamine, dopamine and serotonin. His laboratory also discovered the proteins that switch these receptors off after use.
The Nobel committee, awarding the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Lefkowitz and Kobilka, noted that about half of all medications act through these receptors. Duke pointed to examples including antihistamines, ulcer drugs and beta blockers used for high blood pressure, angina and coronary disease. Lefkowitz has written that his methods changed the way drug candidates are screened and developed.
Why it matters
Knowledge of G protein-coupled receptors guides the development and use of a huge share of today's medicines, from beta blockers to antihistamines.
About Robert Lefkowitz
Bronx-born cardiologist who proved drug receptors exist and uncovered the receptor family through which about half of all medicines act, from beta blockers to antihistamines. Nobel Prize 2012.
Sources
- Press release: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2012 NobelPrize.org
- Robert J. Lefkowitz, Biographical NobelPrize.org
- Duke's Robert Lefkowitz Wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry Duke Today
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.