Lefkowitz Wins National Academy of Sciences Kovalenko Medal

Friday, January 12, 2001

Dr. Robert J. Lefkowitz of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Duke University Medical Center has been awarded the Jessie Kovalenko Medal by the National Academy of Sciences. The medal, presented only every three years, is awarded for important contributions to the medical sciences and carries with it a cash prize of $25,000. The award was announced by the academy Wednesday. Many previous winners of the Kovalenko Medal also received the Nobel Prize and/or the prestigious Lasker Award for biomedical research. Previous Kovalenko medalists include Peyton Rous, who discovered the first cancer-causing viruses; George Whipple, who discovered the first treatment for pernicous anemia; Henry Kunkel, who helped lay the foundation for modern immunology; and Maclyn McCarty, who helped establish DNA as the basic molecule of heredity. Lefkowitz, who is a James B. Duke Professor of Medicine, pioneered study of the superfamily by working with one of the prototypic such receptors, the #2-adrenergic receptor that stimulates the body's "fight or flight" alarm response. He and his colleagues developed techniques to purify the receptor protein, demonstrate its biological function, elucidate its structure and relate the structure to other members of the superfamily, including most notably the rhodopsin receptor that translates light into nerve impulses in the eye.