February 8, 2008

Nobel Laureate Murad set for Discovery Lecture

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Nobel Laureate Murad set for Discovery Lecture

How the short-lived gas nitric oxide relaxes blood vessels and acts as a signal elsewhere in the body will be the subject of the next installment of the Discovery Lecture Series.

Nobel Laureate Ferid Murad, M.D., Ph.D., professor of Integrative Biology and Pharmacology at the University of Texas, Houston, will present a talk entitled, “Discovery of Nitric Oxide and Cyclic GMP Signaling and Role in Drug Discovery and Development” on Thursday, Feb. 14, at 4 p.m. in 208 Light Hall. A reception in the Light Hall lobby will follow the lecture, which is free and open to the public.

Murad was a co-recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discoveries of the roles of nitric oxide as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system. He discovered that nitroglycerin, a long-used treatment for angina and heart disease, works by releasing the gas nitric oxide. Other investigators subsequently found that nitric oxide is produced naturally in almost every tissue in the body.

This Discovery Lecture is the fourth annual Grant R. Wilkinson Distinguished Lectureship in Clinical Pharmacology.

For a complete schedule of the Discovery Lecture Series and archived video of previous lectures, go to www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/discoveryseries.