Source: Frank Blecha, 785-532-4537, blecha@vet.k-state.edu
News release prepared by: Dani Goodband, 785-532-4538, goodband@vet.k-state.edu
Thursday, September 20, 2007
NOBEL LAUREATE TO SPEAK ABOUT PRIZE-WINNING WORK
MANHATTAN -- A biochemist whose work linking cellular water transport to human disorders won a Nobel Prize will discuss his recent findings at 4 p.m. Monday, Oct. 8, in the Hemisphere Room of Hale Library.
Dr. Peter Agre, who shared the 2003 Nobel in chemistry, will present "Aquaporin Water Channels: From Atomic Structure to Clinical Medicine" as a guest lecturer of the department of anatomy and physiology, the university distinguished professors and the provost's office at Kansas State University. A reception for Agre will take place at the K-State Alumni Center right after the lecture. The public is invited to attend.
Agre's Nobel-winning research revealed the molecular basis for the movement of water into and out of cells. His 1992 paper in the journal Science, with Johns Hopkins physiologist Bill Guggino, documented the discovery of a water-channel protein – called an aquaporin – which helps water move through cell membranes.
Since then, Agre and his colleagues have found aquaporins to be part of the blood-brain barrier; they also are associated with water transport in skeletal muscles and the lungs and kidneys. Researchers worldwide now study aquaporins and have linked aberrant water transport to many human disorders.
Agre received his medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1974. His postgraduate training included a residency in internal medicine at Case Western Reserve University and a fellowship in hematology/oncology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1981, he returned to Johns Hopkins, where in 1993 he advanced to professor of biological chemistry. Agre was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2000 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003.
Agre currently is vice chancellor for science and technology at the Duke University Medical Center.