“What I value most is the freedom to investigate, and that is not possible in a commercial context”

Recognized with the 2nd BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine, physician and researcher Robert J. Lefkowitz recounts how, in the 1970s, he committed himself to studying G protein–coupled receptors (GPCRs), despite the prevailing skepticism at the time about their very existence. He explains that these receptors, present in almost all cells, regulate numerous physiological processes and are the target of a large share of current drugs — from beta-blockers to antihistamines — offering an almost unlimited potential for the development of new treatments.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Biomedicine category (2009) has been granted to Prof. Robert J. Lefkowitz, for his discoveries of the seven transmembrane receptors (G protein-coupled receptors), the largest, most versatile and most therapeutically accessible receptor signaling system, and of the general mechanism of their regulation