By Duke Medicine News and Communications

DURHAM, N.C. -- Two Duke University researchers -- a Nobel laureate who shed new light on several diseases by pinpointing how water moves in and out of cells and a neuroscientist whose research has helped reveal how epilepsy develops -- have been elected to the Institute of Medicine.

The institute, established by the National Academy of Sciences in 1970, honors professional achievement in the health sciences and serves as a national resource for independent analysis on issues related to medicine, biomedical sciences and health.

Peter C. Agre, M.D., vice chancellor of science and technology and professor of cell biology, and James O. McNamara, M.D., Carl R. Deane Professor and chair of the Department of Neurobiology, were among 64 people named to membership in the institute Monday morning. Thirty-four faculty members in Duke's School of Medicine and School of Nursing are among the institute's 1,461 active members.

Agre joined Duke earlier this year after 24 years on the faculty at Johns Hopkins University. In 2003, he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for revealing the molecular basis for the movement of water into and out of cells. More than a decade earlier, Agre and Johns Hopkins physiologist Bill Guggino, Ph.D., reported the discovery of the first water-channel protein – called an aquaporin – which facilitates the movement of water molecules into and out of cells through the cell membrane. Since then, Agre and his colleagues have found aquaporins to be part of the blood-brain barrier and also to be associated with water transport in skeletal muscle, lung and kidney. Researchers worldwide now study aquaporins and have linked aberrant water transport to many human disorders.

McNamara joined Duke's faculty in 1973, and in 2002 was appointed chair of the Department of Neurobiology. He also served as director of the Epilepsy Center of the Durham VA Medical Center, and he founded the Duke Center for Advanced Study of Epilepsy.

McNamara's research concentrates on mechanisms of "epileptogenesis" -- the process by which a normal brain becomes epileptic. He analyzes animal models of epileptogenesis to understand the genetic and molecular determinants by which epilepsy develops. These insights could provide new targets for drugs that could prevent epilepsy in individuals at high risk. He has also demonstrated that an auto-immune mechanism contributes to development of a rare form of human epilepsy, Rasmussen's encephalitis.

Harvey V. Fineberg, M.D., Ph.D., president of the Institute of Medicine, will be at Duke on Friday, Oct. 28, to deliver the keynote address at the School of Medicine's 75th Anniversary Symposium on Health Policy and Practice.