Nobel Prize winner in chemistry to speak at CSB

A Nobel Prize winner who is a Minnesota native is coming to the College of Saint Benedict.

Dr. Brian Kobilka will speak on "Structural Insights into G Protein-Coupled Receptor Activation" at 11:50 a.m. Monday, Sept. 19, in room 204B, Gorecki Center, CSB. His presentation is free and open to the public.

Kobilka shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Dr. Robert Lefkowitz for discoveries that revealed the inner workings of an important family of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs).

"The receptors, which snake in and out of the cell membrane, serve as one of the main methods of communication within the body - conveying chemical messages into the cell's interior from outside through the membrane," according to the Stanford Report website. "Over the course of the last three decades, Kobilka and Lefkowitz ... have played an important role in discovering and understanding GPCRs."

A native of nearby Little Falls, Minnesota, Kobilka attended St. Mary's Grade School and Little Falls High School. He received a bachelor's degree in biology and chemistry from the University of Minnesota-Duluth, and earned his M.D. from Yale University School of Medicine.

He completed his residency in internal medicine at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. Kobilka then worked in research as a postdoctoral fellow under Lefkowitz at Duke University.

Kobilka moved to Stanford University in 1989. He is currently the Helene Irwin Chair in Cardiology, professor of molecular and cellular physiology and professor (by courtesy) of chemical and systems biology.

He was named a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2011. He was named a recipient of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics John J. Abel Award in Pharmacology, and his GPCR structure work was named "runner-up" for the 2007 "Breakthrough of the Year" award from Science magazine.