15. Hermann Staudinger Lecture mit Nobelpreisträger 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.

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Report on the 15th Hermann Staudinger Lecture with Peter Agre on June 27th, 2013: "Opening Doors Worldwide through Medical Sciences"

Nobel Prize Laureate Peter Agre was the special guest of the 15th Hermann Staudinger Lecture at FRIAS. Peter Agre, MD and University Professor and Director at the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute, Bloomberg School of Public Health at Baltimore (Maryland USA) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2003 together with Roderick MacKinnon for their "discoveries concerning channels in cell membranes”.

Peter Agre started his motivating lecture with an overview of the perception of Americans in the Arabic world, stating that about 90% of the questioned people generally dislike US Americans, yet also 90% of the same persons acknowledge the quality of US Americans as scientists. Long before seeing these figures, Peter Agre apparently became especially interested in inter-cultural communication – not only in scientific surroundings - and as a result became a committed ambassador of his country.

During his lecture, touching on topics of how discoveries generally are made, more specifically the Nobel Prize rewarded discovery of the aquaporin water channels (and what industry can make out of such discoveries…), and the joy of working in an internationally occupied laboratory, Peter Agre elaborated on the relation between science and society as well as the opportunities and the responsibilities of scientists.

Agre vividly explained how his multiple international collaborations and personal contacts have proven useful to address serious infringements of human rights and may even have opened doors to countries isolated by ideology or repressive regimes, thereby establishing valuable areas of engagement. Being himself a field worker in Zambia and Zimbabwe for about one third of each year, Agre believes that scientists have the unique opportunity – and perhaps also the responsibility - to make the world a better place. Next to his commitment regarding malaria research in Africa, he regularly travels the world including closed countries such as Cuba, Iran and North Korea amongst others, to inspire and to serve as a human archetype for scientists of all career stages. In his spirited lecture in the Anatomy Lecture Hall Peter Agre not only persuaded students of the greater opportunities of being a scientist, but he surely also stimulated a large number of more senior researchers to acknowledge the broader possibilities that come along with being a scientist.