2007 Research Symposium - Johns Hopkins Bayview Scientific Advisory Board

Photos by John Zito Photography

The Second Annual Johns Hopkins Bayview Research Symposium, sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Bayview Scientific Advisory Board took place on Friday, December 7, 2007.

• Video Presentations
• Abstract Booklet

KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Peter Courtland Agre, M.D.
Vice Chancellor for Science and Technology
Professor of Cell Biology
Professor of Medicine
Duke University School of Medicine

Peter Agre's early life reads like a broadcast of the popular radio program A Prairie Home Companion. Son of a St. Olaf College professor, Agre was raised in a small Minnesota farming community.

The family moved to Minneapolis where Agre attended high school and studied chemistry at Augsburg College (BA 1970).

It was while attending medical school at Johns Hopkins (MD 1974) that Agre discovered a love for biomedical research while working in the laboratory of eminent membrane biologist, Pedro Cuatrecasas. Following an Internal Medicine Residency at Case Western Reserve University Hospitals of Cleveland and a Hematology-Oncology Fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Agre returned to Johns Hopkins as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Cell Biology in the laboratory of his medical school room-mate, Vann Bennett.

Agre joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1984 and rose through the ranks to Professor of Biological Chemistry and Professor of Medicine; his research team resided in the laboratory once occupied by Albert Lehninger.

Agre's research 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, Agre's lab 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, Agre shared the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Roderick MacKinnon of Rockefeller University.

Among his awards, Agre received the 1999 Homer Smith Award from the American Society of Nephrology and the 2005 Karl Landsteiner Award from the American Association of Blood Banks. Agre was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2000 and the Institute of Medicine in 2005. He was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003 and the American Philosophical Society in 2004. In 2005, Agre received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America. Agre has received honorary doctorates from universities in Denmark, Japan, Norway, Greece, Mexico, and Hungary as well as his alma mater, Augsburg College.

Agre moved to Duke University School of Medicine in 2005 where he is Vice Chancellor for Science and Technology and also Professor of Cell Biology and Professor of Medicine.