Taming the Autoimmune Beast:The Story of a Wegener?s Survivor - Tapa blanda

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Richard Horuk obtained a Ph. D. degree in Biochemistry from the department of crystallography, Birkbeck College, University of London in 1980. He moved to the USA in 1981 and carried out postdoctoral studies in insulin action at the NIH and at the University of California San Diego. In 1986 he joined the Dupont Company where he developed his interest in immunology and carried out research on the interleukin 1 receptor. In 1991 Dr Horuk joined Genentech in the department of protein chemistry where he started a research program on immune mediators known as chemokines . He was the first to discover that the Duffy Antigen, a portal of entry for the malarial parasite Plasmodium vivax, was also a chemokine receptor. These findings were the first demonstration that G-protein coupled receptors could act as vehicles of entry for pathogens and set the stage for findings that showed that chemokine receptors were HIV-1 coreceptors. Dr Horuk joined Berlex BioSciences in the department of immunology in 1994 and worked on strategies to treat the disease multiple sclerosis. He successfully developed a program of research that was tested in phase II human clinical studies. In 2007 the Berlex site was closed and Dr Horuk is currently teaching Pharmacology and drug discovery part time at the University of California Davis.