Robert Joseph Lefkowitz (born April 15, 1943) is an American physician (internist and cardiologist) and biochemist. He is best known for his groundbreaking discoveries that reveal the inner workings of an important family G protein-coupled receptors, for which he was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with Brian Kobilka. He is currently an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as well as a James B. Duke Professor of Medicine and Professor of Biochemistry and Chemistry at Duke University.
Early life
Lefkowitz was born on April 15, 1943, in The Bronx, New York to Jewish parents Max and Rose Lefkowitz. Their families had emigrated to the United States from Poland in the late 19th century.[3][4]
After graduating from the Bronx High School of Science in 1959,[5] he attended Columbia College from which he received a Bachelor of Arts in chemistry 1962.[6]
He graduated from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1966 with an M.D. degree. After serving an internship and one year of general medical residency at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, he served as clinical and research associate at the National Institutes of Health from 1968 to 1970.
Career
Upon completing his medical residency and research and clinical training in 1973, he was appointed associate professor of medicine and assistant professor of biochemistry at the Duke University Medical Center. In 1977, he was promoted to professor of medicine and in 1982 to James B. Duke Professor of Medicine at Duke University.[7] He is also a professor of biochemistry and a professor of chemistry. He has been an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1976 and was an established investigator of the American Heart Association from 1973–1976.[7]
Lefkowitz studies receptor biology and signal transduction and is most well known for his detailed characterizations of the sequence, structure and function of the β-adrenergic and related receptors and for the discovery and characterization of the two families of proteins which regulate them, the G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) kinases and β-arrestins.[8]
Lefkowitz made a remarkable contribution in the mid-1980s when he and his colleagues cloned the gene first for the β-adrenergic receptor, and then rapidly thereafter, for a total of 8 adrenergic receptors (receptors for adrenaline and noradrenaline). This led to the seminal discovery that all GPCRs (which include the β-adrenergic receptor) have a very similar molecular structure. The structure is defined by an amino acid sequence which weaves its way back and forth across the plasma membrane seven times. Today we know that about 1,000 receptors in the human body belong to this same family. The importance of this is that all of these receptors use the same basic mechanisms so that pharmaceutical researchers now understand how to effectively target the largest receptor family in the human body. Today, as many as 30 to 50 percent of all prescription drugs are designed to "fit" like keys into the similarly structured locks of Lefkowitz' receptors—everything from anti-histamines to ulcer drugs to beta blockers that help relieve hypertension, angina and coronary disease.[9] Lefkowitz is among the most highly cited researchers in the fields of biology, biochemistry, pharmacology, toxicology, and clinical medicine according to Thomson-ISI.[10]
Personal life
Lefkowitz is married to Lynn (née Tilley). He has five children and six grandchildren. He was previously married to Arna Brandel.[6]
In 2021, Lefkowitz published a memoir entitled A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Stockholm: The Adrenaline-Fueled Adventures of an Accidental Scientist.[11] This book was co-authored by Randy Hall, who was a post-doctoral fellow in the Lefkowitz lab in the 1990’s. The book describes Lefkowitz’s early life, training as a physician, and tenure in the United States Public Health Service (the “Yellow Berets” of the NIH), which began as a means of fulfilling his draft obligation during the Vietnam War but ultimately ignited a lifelong passion for research. The second half of the book describes Lefkowitz’s research career and various adventures both before and after his Nobel Prize win. Upon publication in February 2021, the book was named as “New & Noteworthy” by The New York Times[12] and “one of the week’s best science picks” by Nature.[13]
Awards
Lefkowitz has received numerous awards including:
2014 Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement[14]
2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (shared with Brian Kobilka)
2009 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award, in the Biomedicine Category.[15]
2009 Research Achievement Award, American Heart Association[16]
2007 National Medal of Science[17][18]
2007 The Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine [19]
2007 Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research [20]
2003 Fondation Lefoulon – Delalande Grand Prix for Science – Institut de France[21]
2001 Jessie Stevenson Kovalenko Medal of the USA – The National Academy of Sciences [22]
1992 Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement In Cardiovascular Research[23]
1988 Gairdner Foundation International Award[24]
1978 John Jacob Abel Award in Pharmacology [25]
See also
List of Jewish Nobel laureates
References
"The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2012". NobelPrize.org.
Snyder, Bill. "Nobel in Chemistry reveals VU ties that bind". Vanderbilt University.
Ralph Snyderman (2011-10-03). "Introduction of Robert J. Lefkowitz". The Journal of Clinical Investigation. Jci.org. 121 (10): 4192–4300. doi:10.1172/JCI60816. PMC 3195491. PMID 21965339. Retrieved 2012-10-12.
Jay Price (2012-12-30). "Dr. Robert Lefkowitz, Nobel in hand, still shapes young researchers". News & Observer. Archived from the original on 2013-01-20. Retrieved 2013-01-17.
Newman, Andy (October 10, 2012). "Another Nobel for Bronx Science, This One in Chemistry". New York Times.
"Dr. Robert Lefkowitz, Nobel in hand, still shapes young researchers - Local/State - NewsObserver.com". Archived from the original on 2013-01-20. Retrieved 2013-01-17.
"HHMI Investigators – Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D". Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Retrieved 2013-01-14.
"Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D. Biography and Interview". www.achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement.
"Pioneers of cell receptor research share America's top prize in medicine". Albany Medical Center Website.
"Highly Cited Research – Research Analytics – Thomson Reuters". Hcr3.webofknowledge.com. 2011-12-31. Retrieved 2012-10-12.[permanent dead link]
"A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Stockholm". pegasusbooks.com. Retrieved 2021-03-31.
"New & Noteworthy, From Food Policy to Communicating With the Dead". The New York Times. 2021-02-02. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-03-31.
Robinson, Andrew (2021-03-17). "The accidental Nobel laureate, what we owe to our voices and the philosophy of touch: Books in Brief". Nature. 591 (7850): 364. Bibcode:2021Natur.591..364R. doi:10.1038/d41586-021-00661-4.
"Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". www.achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement.
"Biomedicine 2009 Robert J. Lefkowitz". BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards. Archived from the original on 2016-03-17. Retrieved 2013-01-14.
"North Carolina scientist wins American Heart Association award for discovering receptors' role as specific targets for drug therapy". American Heart Association. 2009-11-15. Retrieved 2013-01-14.
"Robert Lefkowitz receiving the National Medal of Science". Duke University. 2008-09-28. Archived from the original on 2021-12-21. Retrieved 2013-01-14. – YouTube video of the ceremony
Duke Medicine News and Communications (2008-09-28). "Duke Medicine Physician-Scientist Receives National Medal of Science". Duke Health.org. Retrieved 2013-01-14.
"Announcement and Citation". The Shaw Prize. 2007-06-12. Archived from the original on 2016-04-07. Retrieved 2013-01-14.
"Albany Medical Center Prize". Albany Medical College. Archived from the original on 2012-07-17. Retrieved 2013-01-14.
"Fondation Lefoulon Delalande – Historique des prix". Fondation Lefoulon – Delalande. Retrieved 2013-01-14.
"Jessie Stevenson Kovalenko Medal". National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 2013-01-14.
"Bristol Myers Squib Achievements". Bristol-Myers Squibb. Retrieved 2013-01-14.
"Robert J. Lefkowitz". Gairdner. Retrieved 2013-01-14.
"Previous Winners of Society Awards" (PDF). American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. Retrieved 2013-01-14.
External links
"Lefkowitz Lab". Retrieved 2013-01-14. – Web site of his lab.
"HHMI Investigators – Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D". Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Retrieved 2013-01-14. – His biography.
Robert J. Lefkowitz Papers at Duke University Medical Center Archives
Video of Lefkowitz talking about his work, from the National Science & Technology Medals Foundation]
Robert Lefkowitz on Nobelprize.org Edit this at Wikidata
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Stockholm
Awards
Preceded by
Dan Shechtman
Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate
2012
With: Brian Kobilka Succeeded by
Michael Levitt
Martin Karplus
Arieh Warshel
vte
Shaw Prize laureates
Astronomy
Jim Peebles (2004) Geoffrey Marcy and Michel Mayor (2005) Saul Perlmutter, Adam Riess and Brian Schmidt (2006) Peter Goldreich (2007) Reinhard Genzel (2008) Frank Shu (2009) Charles Bennett, Lyman Page and David Spergel (2010) Enrico Costa and Gerald Fishman (2011) David C. Jewitt and Jane Luu (2012) Steven Balbus and John F. Hawley (2013) Daniel Eisenstein, Shaun Cole and John A. Peacock (2014) William J. Borucki (2015) Ronald Drever, Kip Thorne and Rainer Weiss (2016) Simon White (2017) Jean-Loup Puget (2018) Edward C. Stone (2019) Roger Blandford (2020) Victoria Kaspi and Chryssa Kouveliotou (2021) Lennart Lindegren and Michael Perryman (2022) Matthew Bailes, Duncan Lorimer and Maura McLaughlin (2023)
Life science
and medicine
Stanley Norman Cohen, Herbert Boyer, Yuet-Wai Kan and Richard Doll (2004) Michael Berridge (2005) Xiaodong Wang (2006) Robert Lefkowitz (2007) Ian Wilmut, Keith H. S. Campbell and Shinya Yamanaka (2008) Douglas Coleman and Jeffrey Friedman (2009) David Julius (2010) Jules Hoffmann, Ruslan Medzhitov and Bruce Beutler (2011) Franz-Ulrich Hartl and Arthur L. Horwich (2012) Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young (2013) Kazutoshi Mori and Peter Walter (2014) Bonnie Bassler and Everett Peter Greenberg (2015) Adrian Bird and Huda Zoghbi (2016) Ian R. Gibbons and Ronald Vale (2017) Mary-Claire King (2018) Maria Jasin (2019) Gero Miesenböck, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel (2020) Scott D. Emr (2021) Paul A. Negulescu and Michael J. Welsh (2022) Patrick Cramer and Eva Nogales (2023)
Mathematical
science
Shiing-Shen Chern (2004) Andrew Wiles (2005) David Mumford and Wentsun Wu (2006) Robert Langlands and Richard Taylor (2007) Vladimir Arnold and Ludwig Faddeev (2008) Simon Donaldson and Clifford Taubes (2009) Jean Bourgain (2010) Demetrios Christodoulou and Richard S. Hamilton (2011) Maxim Kontsevich (2012) David Donoho (2013) George Lusztig (2014) Gerd Faltings and Henryk Iwaniec (2015) Nigel Hitchin (2016) János Kollár and Claire Voisin (2017) Luis Caffarelli (2018) Michel Talagrand (2019) Alexander Beilinson and David Kazhdan (2020) Jean-Michel Bismut and Jeff Cheeger (2021) Noga Alon and Ehud Hrushovski (2022) Vladimir Drinfeld and Shing-Tung Yau (2023)
vte
United States National Medal of Science laureates
vte
Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
1901–1925
1901: Jacobus van 't Hoff 1902: Emil Fischer 1903: Svante Arrhenius 1904: William Ramsay 1905: Adolf von Baeyer 1906: Henri Moissan 1907: Eduard Buchner 1908: Ernest Rutherford 1909: Wilhelm Ostwald 1910: Otto Wallach 1911: Marie Curie 1912: Victor Grignard / Paul Sabatier 1913: Alfred Werner 1914: Theodore Richards 1915: Richard Willstätter 1916 1917 1918: Fritz Haber 1919 1920: Walther Nernst 1921: Frederick Soddy 1922: Francis Aston 1923: Fritz Pregl 1924 1925: Richard Zsigmondy
1926–1950
1926: Theodor Svedberg 1927: Heinrich Wieland 1928: Adolf Windaus 1929: Arthur Harden / Hans von Euler-Chelpin 1930: Hans Fischer 1931: Carl Bosch / Friedrich Bergius 1932: Irving Langmuir 1933 1934: Harold Urey 1935: Frédéric Joliot-Curie / Irène Joliot-Curie 1936: Peter Debye 1937: Norman Haworth / Paul Karrer 1938: Richard Kuhn 1939: Adolf Butenandt / Leopold Ružička 1940 1941 1942 1943: George de Hevesy 1944: Otto Hahn 1945: Artturi Virtanen 1946: James B. Sumner / John Northrop / Wendell Meredith Stanley 1947: Robert Robinson 1948: Arne Tiselius 1949: William Giauque 1950: Otto Diels / Kurt Alder
1951–1975
1951: Edwin McMillan / Glenn T. Seaborg 1952: Archer Martin / Richard Synge 1953: Hermann Staudinger 1954: Linus Pauling 1955: Vincent du Vigneaud 1956: Cyril Hinshelwood / Nikolay Semyonov 1957: Alexander Todd 1958: Frederick Sanger 1959: Jaroslav Heyrovský 1960: Willard Libby 1961: Melvin Calvin 1962: Max Perutz / John Kendrew 1963: Karl Ziegler / Giulio Natta 1964: Dorothy Hodgkin 1965: Robert Woodward 1966: Robert S. Mulliken 1967: Manfred Eigen / Ronald Norrish / George Porter 1968: Lars Onsager 1969: Derek Barton / Odd Hassel 1970: Luis Federico Leloir 1971: Gerhard Herzberg 1972: Christian B. Anfinsen / Stanford Moore / William Stein 1973: Ernst Otto Fischer / Geoffrey Wilkinson 1974: Paul Flory 1975: John Cornforth / Vladimir Prelog
1976–2000
1976: William Lipscomb 1977: Ilya Prigogine 1978: Peter D. Mitchell 1979: Herbert C. Brown / Georg Wittig 1980: Paul Berg / Walter Gilbert / Frederick Sanger 1981: Kenichi Fukui / Roald Hoffmann 1982: Aaron Klug 1983: Henry Taube 1984: Robert Merrifield 1985: Herbert A. Hauptman / Jerome Karle 1986: Dudley R. Herschbach / Yuan T. Lee / John Polanyi 1987: Donald J. Cram / Jean-Marie Lehn / Charles J. Pedersen 1988: Johann Deisenhofer / Robert Huber / Hartmut Michel 1989: Sidney Altman / Thomas Cech 1990: Elias Corey 1991: Richard R. Ernst 1992: Rudolph A. Marcus 1993: Kary Mullis / Michael Smith 1994: George Olah 1995: Paul J. Crutzen / Mario Molina / F. Sherwood Rowland 1996: Robert Curl / Harold Kroto / Richard Smalley 1997: Paul D. Boyer / John E. Walker / Jens Christian Skou 1998: Walter Kohn / John Pople 1999: Ahmed Zewail 2000: Alan J. Heeger / Alan MacDiarmid / Hideki Shirakawa
2001–present
2001: William Knowles / Ryoji Noyori / K. Barry Sharpless 2002: John B. Fenn / Koichi Tanaka / Kurt Wüthrich 2003: Peter Agre / Roderick MacKinnon 2004: Aaron Ciechanover / Avram Hershko / Irwin Rose 2005: Robert H. Grubbs / Richard R. Schrock / Yves Chauvin 2006: Roger D. Kornberg 2007: Gerhard Ertl 2008: Osamu Shimomura / Martin Chalfie / Roger Y. Tsien 2009: Venkatraman Ramakrishnan / Thomas A. Steitz / Ada E. Yonath 2010: Richard F. Heck / Akira Suzuki / Ei-ichi Negishi 2011: Dan Shechtman 2012: Robert Lefkowitz / Brian Kobilka 2013: Martin Karplus / Michael Levitt / Arieh Warshel 2014: Eric Betzig / Stefan Hell / William E. Moerner 2015: Tomas Lindahl / Paul L. Modrich / Aziz Sancar 2016: Jean-Pierre Sauvage / Fraser Stoddart / Ben Feringa 2017: Jacques Dubochet / Joachim Frank / Richard Henderson 2018: Frances Arnold / Gregory Winter / George Smith 2019: John B. Goodenough / M. Stanley Whittingham / Akira Yoshino 2020: Emmanuelle Charpentier / Jennifer Doudna 2021: David MacMillan / Benjamin List 2022: Carolyn R. Bertozzi / Morten P. Meldal / Karl Barry Sharpless 2023: Moungi G. Bawendi / Louis E. Brus / Alexei I. Ekimov
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