Familial Hypercholesterolemia

Talk Overview

While post-doctoral fellows at the NIH, Joe Goldstein and Michael Brown were presented with a young patient with familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), a disease characterized by high LDL cholesterol and atherosclerosis.  Scientific curiosity along with a desire to help these patients led Brown and Goldstein to dedicate themselves to understanding the biological basis for FH.  In their first talk, Brown and Goldstein describe the excitement of discovering that cells from an FH patient could not take up LDL cholesterol, which then led to the discovery of LDL receptors and the mechanism of receptor-mediated endocytosis.  Their second talk elaborates on the joy of collaborating and sharing their discoveries for over 40 years.

Speaker Bio

Michael Brown

Michael S. Brown received a B.A. degree in Chemistry in 1962 and an M.D. degree in 1966 from the University of Pennsylvania. He was an intern and resident at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Earl Stadtman at the National Institutes of Health. In 1971, he came to UT Southwestern where… Continue Reading

Joseph Goldstein

Joseph Goldstein is Chair of the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Michael Brown is Professor of Molecular Genetics and Director of the Jonsson Center for Molecular Genetics at UTSW.   For over 40 years, Drs. Brown and Goldstein have directed a lab together and worked to understand the… Continue Reading