P R E S S   R E L E A S E

Professor Ferid Murad give a public lecture at The Chinese University of Hong Kong today at Lecture Theatre 1 of the Lady Shaw Building.  The title of the lecture is "Cellular signaling with nitric oxide and cyclic GMP".

Ferid Murad, M.D., Ph.D., currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Integrative Biology, Pharmacology and Physiology at the University of Texas-Houston Medical School, received the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for his pioneering work on the mechanism of nitric oxide (NO)-induced vasodilation and the role of cyclic GMP as a signaling molecule.  The 1998 Nobel Prize was shared with two other American scientists, Prof. Robert F. Furchgott and Prof. Louis J. Ignarro, who also contributed to the early evidence that NO is a normal biological regulator of blood vessels.  Specifically, Professor Murad laboratory was the first to discover the involvement of cyclic GMP in the vasodilatory actions of NO as well as drugs that release NO, such as the anti-anginal drug nitroglycerin and the anti-hypertensive drug sodium nitroprusside.  Shortly following Prof. Furchgott's discovery of EDRF, a vasodilator substance released from vascular endothelial cells, Prof. Murad's laboratory was the first to show that EDRF used an identical signal transduction pathway as NO to cause vasodilation, suggesting that EDRF and NO could be very similar (if not identical) molecules.  A few years later, Prof. Ignarro and Prof. Furchgott confirmed that EDRF was indeed NO.  The early date from these three laboratories eventually lead to the development of Viagra?, the first successful orally-administered treatment for erectile dysfunction.  Viagra? works by potentiating NO's effects on cyclic GMP in the human penis, thereby potentiating the natural erectile function.