Meet 2024 Grimwade Medallist - Nobel Prize Winner Prof Brian Kobilka
The Grimwade Medal promotes the discipline of biochemistry and molecular biology by inviting a stellar researcher each year to visit the University, this year Prof Brian Kobilka, MD, from the Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology at Stanford University School of Medicine, in California USA will be presented with the accolade and give an oration ‘G Protein Coupled Receptors: Challenges and New Approaches to Drug Discovery’.
Registration - Grimwade Medalist Oration on Sunday 22 September
Register: Biomolecular Horizons 2024 Conference <Grimwade Medallist Oration held as part of Conference>
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Meet Prof Brian Kobilka
Brian Kobilka was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2012 for discoveries that revealed the workings of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). GPCRs are molecular switches on our cell surfaces that are important for how our bodies respond to hormones and neurotransmitters. They also underpin our senses of sight, smell, and taste.
GPCRs are a major focus for developing drugs, including opioids that treat acute and chronic pain. While current opioid painkillers are effective, they are highly addictive and have contributed to the opioid epidemic.
In his Grimwade Award Plenary Lecture, Professor Kobilka will explore how GPCR signaling works, and the difficulties in discovering drugs for GPCRs, using the µ-opioid receptor (µOR) as an example. He will discuss what we've learned about the structure of the opioid receptor and how it relates to signaling through this pathway. Understanding the molecular details of GPCRs is helping the development of new drugs that separate pain relief from addiction and other negative effects.
Image: Jonathan Sprague/Redux/eyevine
In the lead up to the Grimwade Medal Plenary Public Oration, as part of the Biomolecular Horizons 2024 Conference at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre on Sunday 22 September, we wanted to learn more about the life and work of Prof Brian Kobilka.
Setbacks are part of science. It's important to try and learn from them and move forward.
Early Life and Work
Prof Brian Kobilka grew up in Little Falls Morrison County, a small town in America’s mid western state of Minnesota. His first job was working in the family bakery, slicing and packaging bread for sale at local supermarkets.
At the age of just 14, he and a friend spent a summer cycling 2,253km (1,400 miles) to Yellowstone National Park and back to Little Falls, sleeping for free in schools, churches, private homes, and on two occasions in jail cells! This started a passion for cycling, where Brian spent summers riding across the US, touring England and did some racing. He still enjoys cycling and in 2005 rode the Pyreness with son Jason during the Tour de France.
Brian Kobilka received Bachelor of Science Degrees in Biology and Chemistry from the University of Minnesota, Duluth in 1977. In his first semester he met sophomore Tong Sun Thian, who would become his wife, and with whom he would work in the lab on and off for more than 30 years.
Brian graduated from Yale University School of Medicine in 1981, and completed residency training in Internal Medicine at the Barnes Hospital, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri in 1984. Brian and Tong Sun would start their family during this time, welcoming a son, Jason and a daughter, Megan.
From 1984-1989, Brian was a postdoctoral fellow, where he conducted his Nobel Prize-winning research, together with, and in the laboratory of, Robert Lefkowitz at Duke University.
In 1990 he joined the faculty of Medicine and Molecular and Cellular Physiology at Stanford University. Research in the Kobilka lab focuses on the structure and mechanism of action of G protein coupled receptors.
We are hoping to make drug discovery less expensive, more efficient, more selective with fewer side effects.
Brian is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2012, Kobilka was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Robert Lefkowitz for their work on GPCRs.
Taken from Brian Kobilka – Biographical. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Wed. 22 May 2024. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2012/kobilka/biographical/>
Grimwade Medallist Oration
The University of Melbourne Grimwade Medallist Oration, sponsored by the Department of Biochemistry & Pharmacology, will be held as part of the Biomolecular Horizons 2024 Conference at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre on Sunday 22 September.
Registration
Note: This button / link is for people who are not attending the BMH2024 Congress.
Register: Grimwade Lecture Only
If you have registered to attend BMH2024 and have not already booked a ticket to the Grimwade Lecture as part of your registration package, please email bmh2024@wsm.com.au and a ticket will be added to your registration.”
Biomolecular Horizons 2024 Outreach Event
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