Ferid Murad life and biography

Ferid Murad is an Albanian-American physician and pharmacologist, and a co-winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He is also an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Kosovo.

In 1977, Ferid Murad showed that nitroglycerin and other similar heart drugs increase the diameter of blood vessels. Robert F. Furchgott explained that this effect was caused by a mysterious endothelium-derived relaxing factor (EDRF), and several years later, Furchgott, Murad, and Louis J. Ignarro -- all working independently of each other -- showed that nitric oxide in the bloodstream triggers this response. For this work, all three men shared the 1998 Nobel Prize in Medicine. In addition to its use in cardiovascular drugs, Murad's work on nitric oxide led to the development of Viagra. Nitric oxide is the only gas known to act as a signaling molecule in the body, and regulates activities of the brain, intestines, kidneys, liver, lungs, stomach, and genitals.

Murad left academia to oversee research at Abbott Laboratories in the late 1980s. He later left Abbott to start his own biotech company, Molecular Geriatrics Corporation, which floundered financially before he left (and is now known as Applied NeuroSolutions). He has since returned to campus life, working at the University of Texas.

His father, an Albanian shepherd who became an American restaurateur, was Muslim. His mother was Baptist, he was raised Catholic, and baptized Episcopalian in college.

Awards:

Lasker Award 1996
Nobel Prize for Medicine 1998 (with Robert F. Furchgott and Louis J. Ignarro)
Federation of American Scientists Board of Sponsors
Phi Beta Kappa Society
Massachusetts General Hospital Internship (1965-67)
Abbott Laboratories VP (1988-93)

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