CME INDIA Presentation by ⚜ Dr. M. Gowri Sankar, MD, Senior Assistant Professor, Dept. of General Medicine, Government Medical College and ESI Hospital, Coimbatore.
Today’s History Feature:
Dr. Bert Sakmann
(Born – June 12, 1942)
💠German Cell Physiologist
His contributions…
🔸Sakmann studied Medicine at the University of Tubingen and Munich. He received his medical degree from the University of Gottingen in 1974.
🔸He started working as a scientific assistant in Department of Neurobiology at Munich’s Max-Planck Institute for Psychiatry and then in Biophysical chemistry. There he worked with Dr. Erwin Neher, a German Biophysicist.
🔸Further, they jointly invented the Patch-Clamp Technique. By using the technique, they became the first to establish the existence of Single Ion channels in cell membrane.
🔸This remarkable breakthrough paved a new way of understanding the Membrane Physiology and the ground breaking invention of Patch-Clamp technique was used to study the individual ions channels.
🔸Both were honoured with shared Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology in the year 1991 for discoveries concerning the single Ion channels in cell membrane.
🔸Moreover, they published a book called Single Channel Recording (in 1983, 2005). It consists of a variety of techniques used to study the membrane channels.
🔸The discovery played an important role in Ion channel related diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cystic fibrosis, epilepsy and neuromuscular disease.
🔸It also created a new concept of using therapeutic for targeting on Ion channels for these diseases.
The Living Legend
Celebrating his birthday today 💐
Dr. Bert Sakmann 🙏
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