The Ohio State Center for Ethics and Human Values and the Ohio State Center for Microbial Interface Biology present
Peter Agre
"International Diplomacy through Medicine"
Nobel laureate Peter Agre, MD became the second director of the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute in January, 2008, succeeding founding director Diane E. Griffin, MD, PhD, who remains as chair of the department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology.
Dr. Agre's research in red-blood-cell biochemistry led to the first known membrane defects in congenital hemolytic anemias (spherocytosis) and produced the first isolation of the Rh blood group antigens. In 1992, his laboratory became widely recognized for discovering the aquaporins, a family of water channel proteins found throughout nature and responsible for numerous physiological processes in humans— including kidney concentration, as well as secretion of spinal fluid, aqueous humor, tears, sweat, and release of glycerol from fat. Aquaporins have been implicated in multiple clinical disorders—including fluid retention, bedwetting, brain edema, cataracts, heat prostration, and obesity. Water transport in lower organisms, microbes, and plants also depend upon aquaporins. For this work, Dr. Agre shared the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Roderick MacKinnon of Rockefeller University.
