Richard P. Lifton, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Genetics and Sterling Professor of Genetics and Internal Medicine at Yale University School of Medicine, will be the next speaker in the 2011 Senior Vice Chancellor’s Laureate Lecture Series, a year-long program highlighting some of the top biomedical researchers in their fields. His lecture, titled “Genes, Genomes, and the Future of Medicine,” will take place at noon on Thursday, September 22, in Scaife Hall, Auditorium 6.

Hypertension is one of the most common medical conditions in adults and a leading risk factor for cardiovascular disease, the number one cause of death worldwide. Until recently, treatment for hypertension was largely empiric, with doctors choosing among dozens of antihypertensive medications targeted to various end-organs to test what did or didn’t work to lower blood pressure. Little was understood about the underlying causes of hypertension, and even less about tailoring treatment to individual patients.

For the last two decades, Lifton has pioneered an unconventional and innovative approach to hypertension. Using genetic methods to study inheritance patterns in thousands of families with extreme blood pressure variation, he has identified more than 25 genes associated with hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and osteoporosis and 19 gene mutations responsible for severely high and low blood pressures. Further, Lifton characterized these gene mutations and demonstrated a pathophysiologic mechanism common among them that has had profound implications for the pharmacologic treatment of hypertension. In a 1994 landmark article published in Cell, he showed that a gene mutation in a kidney nephron sodium channel led to salt retention, an expansion of extracellular fluid volume, and a rise in blood pressure. “It was the first paper to demonstrate a mutation intrinsic to the kidney was critical for blood pressure homeostasis,” Lifton said. His work has provided the scientific underpinnings for today’s cheapest, most widely prescribed, and first-choice class of antihypertensive drugs—diuretics, which lower blood pressure by reducing renal salt reabsorption.

In his current research, Lifton is wielding cutting-edge genomic tools to identify genetic variants for hypertension at the population level. His work may one day lead to personalized treatment and prevention strategies for high blood pressure based on individual genetic profiles.

Lifton received his bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth and his medical degree and PhD in biochemistry from Stanford. He completed his medical residency at the Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital prior to joining the faculty at Yale in 1993 as an assistant professor of medicine and genetics. A year later, he became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and, by 1997, had been promoted to the level of full professor. Today, Lifton is chair of the Department of Genetics, Sterling Professor of Genetics and Internal Medicine, and director of the Yale Center for Human Genetics and Genomics.

Lifton has received numerous honors and awards, including the 2008 Wiley Prize in Biochemical Sciences, the Alfred Newton Richards Award from the International Society of Nephrology, the Robert Tigerstedt Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society of Hypertension, and the Distinguished Scientist Award from the American Heart Association. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences.