Lefkowitz, Robert Joseph
Lefkowitz, Robert Joseph,
1943–, American physician, b. New York City, M.D. Columbia, 1966. Since 1973 Lefkowitz has been a professor at Duke Univ.; he was appointed a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator in 1976. Lefkowitz shared the 2012 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with Brian KobilkaKobilka, Brian Kent,1955–, American physician, b. Little Falls, Minn., M.D. Yale, 1981. He was a researcher at Duke Univ. from 1981 to 1989, where he worked with Robert Lefkowitz; in 1989 he joined the faculty at Stanford.
..... Click the link for more information. for their studies of G-protein-coupled receptors. The human body has about a thousand of these versatile biological sensors, which play critical roles in virtually all known physiological processes including sight, smell, and taste; regulation of heart rate and blood pressure; pain tolerance; and glucose metabolism. Through his work Lefkowitz defined the field of receptor biology, which has important applications in the development of new drugs and new treatments for human diseases.