Nobel Prize Winner Peter Agre to Speak at TEDx MidAtlantic

We are very honored to announce that Nobel Laureate Peter Agre has joined the TEDx MidAtlantic speaker lineup. Dr. Agre was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of aquaporins. Aquaporins are “the plumbing system for cells,” said Agre. Every cell is primarily water. “But the water doesn’t just sit in the cell, it moves through it in a very organized way. The process occurs rapidly in tissues that have these aquaporins or water channels.”

If aquaporins could be manipulated, it could potentially solve medical problems such as fluid retention in heart disease and brain edema after stroke.

Dr. Agre currently leads the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute, and serves as the 163rd president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the nation’s largest scientific organization. He was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences in 2000 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003. He is also a founding member of Scientists and Engineers for America (SEA), and serves on its Board of Advisors.

In 2004, Dr. Agre turned his research attention toward malaria when he was awarded a pilot grant from JHMRI. A major part of the parasite’s lifecycle is in red blood cells, so Agre’s background as a hematologist and red-blood-cell membrane biochemist has the potential to be very useful. Agre is currently examining whether aquaporins within the malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium could be utilized to disrupt its lifecycle.