15th Hermann Staudinger Lecture with Nobel Laureate Peter Agre: "Opening Doors Worldwide through Medical Science"

The major lesson I learned from a four-decade career in medical science is that we have a unique opportunity to make the world a better place. As a student at Johns Hopkins in the 1970’s, I worked in an international research laboratory on the important, but not glamorous, problem of infectious diarrhea. This work brought me in contact with a group of fascinating and colorful researchers from around the world, and it certainly changed my life. Subsequently as a Johns Hopkins faculty member, our research group discovered the aquaporin water channels that facilitate the movement of water across cell membranes. This led to multiple international collaborations including studies with renal physiologists in Denmark, neuroscientists in Norway, structural biologists in Switzerland and Japan, and field workers in Africa. While the practical value of these discoveries is just emerging, valuable new preventive strategies and treatments for multiple disorders are anticipated, including renal failure, brain edema, blindness, wound healing, and infectious diseases. In addition to achievements in the laboratory and clinic, the human contacts we have developed have proven useful to address serious infringements of human rights and may even open doors to countries isolated by ideology or repressive regimes, establishing valuable areas of engagement. The potential of medical science should continue to be explored and is a source of great optimism for an otherwise troubled planet.