Balz Frei, Ph.D., will be the guest speaker Friday, April 9, at the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s 2010 Denham Harman, M.D., Ph.D., Lectureship in Biomedical Gerontology. Dr. Frei is director and Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University.
The lecture, sponsored by the UNMC Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, will be held at noon in the Durham Research Center Auditorium and is open to the public. Lunch will be provided for the first 300 attendees.
The title of Dr. Frei’s talk is “Oxidative Stress and Inflammation in Aging and Atherosclerosis: Ameliorating Effects of Lipoic Acid.” The talk will address biological effects of lipoic acid supplementation on aging and vascular disease, and orthomolecular medicine, which focuses on preventing or treating diseases with nutrients.
Dr. Frei conducts research on oxidative stress and inflammation in aging and heart disease. Oxidative stress — the attack of oxygen in the body — is what makes us age and develop chronic diseases such as cancer, heart disease, Parkinson’s disease and a host of other maladies.
He directs research at the Linus Pauling Institute, one of the nation’s first two centers of excellence for research on complementary and alternative medicine.
The Harman lecture was established by the University of Nebraska Foundation in honor of Dr. Harman, Emeritus Millard Professor of Medicine at UNMC, who is known internationally as the father of the Free Radical Theory of Aging. He proposed the theory in 1954 and discovered the role of antioxidants (vitamins C, E and beta-carotene), in fighting heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
Dr. Frei said Dr. Harman’s theory has had a huge impact on his and others’ research in antioxidants.
“Anybody who is interested in the biology of aging has to consider oxidative damage as an important contributing factor, and there is no doubt that free radicals and oxidative or “redox” stress play an important role in aging,” Dr. Frei said. “It is amazing to think that Dr. Harman proposed the free radical theory of aging back in 1956 before we even knew that free radicals play an important role in biology and chronic disease.”
Dr. Frei received his master’s and doctoral degrees in biochemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, Switzerland and did post-doctoral work in biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley.
As the state’s only academic health science center, UNMC is on the leading edge of health care. Breakthroughs are possible because hard-working researchers, educators and clinicians are resolved to work together to fuel discovery. In 2009, UNMC’s extramural research support topped $100 million for the first time, resulting in the creation of 3,600 jobs in Nebraska. UNMC’s academic excellence is shown through its award-winning programs, and its educational programs are responsible for training more health professionals practicing in Nebraska than any other institution. Through its commitment to education, research, patient care and outreach, UNMC and its hospital partner, The Nebraska Medical Center, have established themselves as one of the country’s leading health care centers. UNMC’s physician practice group, UNMC Physicians, includes 550 physicians in 50 specialties and subspecialties who practice primarily in The Nebraska Medical Center. For more information, go to UNMC’s Web site at www.unmc.edu.
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