Nobel-prize winner visits homeland

TIRANA, June 15 – Ferid Murad, the Nobel-prize winner of Albanian origin, made a visit to his homeland where he was welcomed by top officials and academic staff.
Ferid Murad, 75, is an Albanian-American physician and pharmacologist (his father was an Albanian named Xhabir Murat Ejupi), and a co-winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
He received many honorary medals starting with the president and Tirana University.
“Such an example of the professional will and determination is a strong model and motive for the work of all Albanian youngsters,” said President Bamir Topi.
Murad’s key research demonstrated that nitroglycerin and related drugs worked by releasing nitric oxide into the body, which acted as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system, making blood vessels dilate. The missing steps in the signaling process were filled in by Robert F. Furchgott and Louis J. Ignarro, for which the three shared the 1998 Nobel Prize (and for which Murad and Furchgott received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1996). There was some criticism, however, of the Nobel committee’s decision not to award the prize to Salvador Moncada, who had independently reached the same results as Ignarro.