Peter Agre

Peter Agre is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Professor in the Department of Biological Chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In Biology, his groundbreaking research led to the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, shared for the discovery of aquaporin water channels—integral membrane proteins that enable rapid water movement across cell membranes, forming the plumbing system of cells and contributing to the production of biological fluids including cerebrospinal fluid, aqueous humor, saliva, sweat, and concentrated urine. Agre's investigations have elucidated aquaporin structures, such as the hourglass model, and their roles in kidney function, brain edema, glandular secretion, microbial physiology, and diseases like malaria.

Agre earned a chemistry degree from Augsburg College in 1970 and his MD from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1974. He completed residency training in internal medicine at Case Western Reserve University Hospitals (1975-1978) and a fellowship in hematology and oncology at the University of North Carolina in 1978. Joining Johns Hopkins faculty in 1981, he was appointed assistant professor in 1984 and promoted to full professor of Biological Chemistry in 1993. Appointed Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in 2014, he directed the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute from 2007 to 2023, managing 20 laboratories in Baltimore and field studies in Zambia and Zimbabwe focused on malaria resistance, vaccines, and epidemiology. His research spans molecular aspects of hemolytic anemias, blood group antigens, and malaria, with seminal publications including 'Partial deficiency of erythrocyte spectrin in hereditary spherocytosis' (Nature, 1985), 'Appearance of water channels in Xenopus oocytes expressing red cell CHIP28 protein' (Science, 1992), 'Aquaporins in the kidney: from molecules to medicine' (Physiological Reviews, 2002), and his Nobel Lecture 'Aquaporin water channels' (Angewandte Chemie, 2004). Agre was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2000 and the Institute of Medicine in 2005, and has pursued science diplomacy through exchanges with North Korea, Cuba, Myanmar, and Iran.