"What Does that UT Southwestern Enzyme Really Do?"

Speaker:

Robert Munford, M.D.
Scientist Emeritus
Laboratory of Clinical Immunology & Microbiology
National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases

About Robert Munford:

Dr. Munford hols a bachelor's degree from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and a master's degree from Oxford University in England. He earned his medical degree from Harvard Medical School, followed by internal medicine residency training at Parkland Memorial Hospital and an infectious diseases fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital.

In 1986, while serving on the faculty at UT Southwestern, Dr. Munford discovered acyloxyacyl hyrdolase (AOAH), a human and animal enzyme which detoxifies endotoxin in vivo. He radio-labelled endotoxin preparations and showed that in animals and humans that endotoxin was degraded to an inactive molecule. This led to the isolation and purification of the enzyme which accomplished the degradation. The end-product of the reaction reduced the toxicity of lipopolysaccharide and preserved its capacity for beneficial inflammatory and immune stimuli.

Dr. Munford's research interests include the pathogenesis of sepsis, inflammation-inducible gene therapy, AOAH and its role in preventing lipopolysaccharides endotoxins, and the influence of extracellular pH on macrophage lipid metabolism.