Brown, Michael Stuart (1941–)

Michael Stuart Brown is an American geneticist who, along with Joseph L. Goldstein, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1985 for a description of the regulation of cholesterol metabolism.

Brown was born to Harvey Brown, a textile salesman, and Evelyn Brown, a housewife, on April 13, 1941, in Brooklyn, New York. When Brown was 11 years old, the family moved to a suburb of Philadelphia, where Brown attended Cheltenham High School. While still a teenager, Brown developed the two main interests that would characterize his career: science and writing. He combined these two interests while a student at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in chemistry in 1962 and working for the student newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian. In 1966, Brown obtained his M.D. degree from the School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. He spent the next two years as intern and resident in Internal Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where he met Joseph L. Goldstein, with whom he would establish a long-term scientific collaboration.

From 1968 to 1971, Brown worked at the National Institutes of Health, initially as a clinical associate in gastroenterology and hereditary disease, and then joining the Laboratory of Biochemistry, where he became interested in enzymology and metabolic regulation. In 1971, Brown became a member of the division of gastroenterology in the Department of Internal Medicine [Page 316]at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas and was joined the following year by Goldstein. Brown became a professor in 1976 and, a year later, he was appointed director of the Southwestern Medical School's Center for Genetic Disease.

Brown and Goldstein fully resumed their scientific collaboration, researching, in particular, the causes of hypercholesterolemia. They discovered that human cells have low-density lipoprotein (LDL) receptors that remove cholesterol from blood. When LDL receptors are not present in sufficient numbers, individuals develop hypercholesterolemia, thus becoming at risk for cholesterol-related diseases. Brown and Goldstein's research led to the development of statin drugs, the cholesterol-lowering compounds that reduce the risk of heart diseases and strokes.

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Brown has been awarded many other important honors, including the National Medal of Science in 1988. He is a member of important scientific institutions, including the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Board of Internal Medicine, and he is a fellow of the American College of Physicians.