Ferid Murad

Ferid Murad ( born September 14, 1936 in Whiting, Indiana, United States) is an American physician and pharmacologist, who received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1998.

Biography

Murad, the son of an Albanian immigrant and a U.S. citizen, graduated from DePauw University in Indiana and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland (Ohio ), where he received his doctorate in medicine and pharmacology 1965. He went to the University of Virginia, where he became professor in 1970. In 1981, he moved to Stanford. When he received the Nobel Prize, he worked at the " Department of Integrative Biology (Department of Integrative Biology ) at the University of Texas in Houston. Murad is currently Director of the Institute of Molecular Medicine ( Institute of Molecular Medicine ) and owner of the John S. Dunn Department of Physiology and Medicine at the same university.

Murad's main field of research was initially activating the enzyme guanylate cyclase, which is involved in the regulation of the cardiovascular system. He was able to show that the effect of a series of vasodilating drugs, is mediated by the enzyme, based on the release of nitric oxide. Robert F. Furchgott showed independent of Murad that blood vessels themselves one by him EDRF ( endothelium - derived relaxing factor, such as: derived from the endothelium vasodilator factor ) form called substance. Murad was finally able to simultaneously show with working independently of him, Louis J. Ignarro, that it is nitric oxide or a closely related species in EDRF. The working group of Murad later succeeded also to isolate the enzyme NO synthase, which forms nitric oxide in the blood vessels. For these discoveries, the three researchers jointly received the 1998 Nobel Prize for Medicine. Murad and Furchgott was awarded for this research in 1996, the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research. In later works Murad dealt with other aspects of cardiovascular regulation by messengers at the molecular level.

It was after the award of the Nobel Prize, however, criticism of the decision awarding the prize, as the committee had the Honduran scientists Salvador Moncada awarded no part of the price which had come independently of the winners to the same results as Ignarro.