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Columbia College alumnus wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Dr. Robert J. Lefkowitz CC’62, P&S’66, a professor at the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., and a Howard Hughes PHOTO: DUKE UNIVERSITY PHOTOGRAPHYPHOTO: DUKE UNIVERSITY PHOTOGRAPHY Medical Institute researcher, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors, or receptors that catch chemical signals and transmit their messages into cells, providing cells with information about changes in the body. He shares the prize — eight million Swedish krona, or about $1.2 million — with Dr. Brian K. Kobilka, a professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine in California, who was a post-doctoral fellow in Lefkowitz's lab in the 1980s. They will receive the Nobel Prize in Stockholm at a Dec. 10 ceremony.