Lefkowitz, Robert Joseph

views updated

Robert Joseph Lefkowitz, 1943–, American physician, b. New York, N.Y., 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 Kobilka 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.

More From encyclopedia.com