Pharmacological Sciences

DEPARTMENT OF PHARMACOLOGICAL SCIENCES

About
the Speaker

Dr. Furchgott was born in Charleston,
SC. He received a B.S. degree in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina
in 1937 and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Northwestern University in 1940.
He was on the faculty of Cornell University College of Medicine (Departments
of Medicine and Physiology) from 1940 - 1949 and of Washington University
(Department of Pharmacology) from 1949 - 1956. He served as Professor and
Chairman of the Department of Pharmacology at the State University of New
York Downstate Medical Center (now SUNY Health Science Center at Brooklyn)
from 1956 - 1982, and is presently Distinguished Professor Emeritus at that
institution.

Dr. Furchgott is recognized for
his research in cardiac pharmacology, adrenergic peripheral mechanisms, theory
of drug-receptor mechanisms, and vascular pharmacology and physiology. Much
of his research has been carried out on isolated, living preparations of heart
and blood vessels. His development in the 1950's of the helical strip of rabbit
thoracic aorta as a model system for studies on drug-receptor mechanisms has
been used in laboratories worldwide. He was one of the first investigators
to demonstrate the importance of the neuronal uptake mechanism for modulating
response of adrenergic effector organs to norepinephrine and epinephrine.
Before the advent of radioligands for studying receptors, he developed theory
and pharmacological procedures for the characterization and differentiation
of cell membrane receptors on which drugs, neurotransmitters, and hormones
act. He was a pioneer in developing the concept and theoretical basis of "receptor
reserve". He made the novel discovery that vascular smooth muscle is
photosensitive, undergoing reversible relaxation when exposed to near ultraviolet
light.

In 1980, he reported his discovery
of the obligatory role of endothelial cells in the relaxation (vasodilation)
of arteries by acetylcholine and related muscarinic agonists, and demonstrated
that the relaxation resulted from release of a labile factor (later called
endothelium-derived relaxing factor or EDRF) from the stimulated endothelial
cells. This novel discovery was followed by the discovery in his laboratory
and other laboratories that many vasodilators, both endogenous substances
and drugs, act by stimulating release of EDRF. He independently showed that
EDRF acts by stimulating the enzyme guanylate cyclase in the vascular smooth
muscle cells, leading to an increase in cyclic GMP which mediates relaxation.
He also found that photorelaxation of blood vessels is mediated by an increase
in cyclic GMP. In 1986, he presented evidence for his independent proposal
that EDRF is nitric oxide (NO), and that the neurotransmitter released by
NANC nerves may also be NO. The discovery of endothelium-dependent vasodilation
and the identification of EDRF as NO have opened up a new area of research
which is contributing much to our understanding of cardiovascular physiology
and pathology.

Dr. Furchgott is a recipient of
a number of awards and honors. Among these are the Goodman and Gilman Award
for Research on Receptor Pharmacology from the American Society for Pharmacology
and Experimental Therapeutics (1984); the CIBA Award from the Hypertension
Section of the American Heart Association (1988); the Research Achievement
Award of the American Heart Association (1990); the first annual Bristol-Myers
Squibb Award for Achievement in Cardiovascular Research (1991); the Gardiner
Foundation International Award (1991); Medal of the New York Academy of Medicine
(1992); Roussel Uclaf Prize for Research in the Field of Cell Communication
and Signalling (1994); Wellcome Gold Medal of the British Pharmacological
Society (1995); the ASPET Award for Experimental Therapeutics (1996); the
Gregory Pincus Medal and Award (1996); the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research
Award (1996); The Louis and Artur Lucian Award (1997); the Nobel Prize in
Physiology of Medicine (1998).

He is the recipient of Honorary
Doctoral Degrees (in Medicine or Science) from the Autonomous University of
Madrid; the University of Lund, Sweden; the University of North Carolina;
the University of Ghent, Belgium; the Mount Sinai School of Medicine; Ohio
State University; the Medical University of South Carolina; the Medical College
of Ohio; Northwestern University; University College, London; and Washington
University at St. Louis. He was President of the American Society for Pharmacology
and Experimental Therapeutics (1971 - 1972). He is a member of the National
Academy of Sciences (1990) and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences (2000).