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In this issue of the Research Newsletter, the Linus Pauling Institute looks ahead to our 10th biennial conference, to be held August 14-16, 2019 on the Oregon State University campus.

One of the conference's main sessions will explore new approaches to the treatment of neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, the role that oxidation/reduction reactions play in biology, and how nutrition and dietary supplements can help maintain cognitive resilience and prevent neurodegeneration.

Thus, it is only proper that in this issue we feature Dr. Kathy Magnusson’s laboratory. Her work on campus for the last 14 years spans many aspects of neuroscience, and now her work in the LPI studies the effects of dietary supplements on cognitive function.

Our conference will close with a public session featuring Dr. Louis J. Ignarro, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1998. His presentation, The Road to Stockholm – A Nobel Mission, is free for all to attend. 

In his Nobel Prize winning research, Dr. Ignarro discovered that a molecule produced by the body called nitric oxide relaxes vascular smooth muscle. This amazing molecule can lower blood pressure, inhibit platelet aggregation, and mediates erectile function.

One of the reasons Dr. Ignarro wanted to speak this year was his due to interactions with Dr. Pauling in the 1950s and 1960s. In his own words:

“I first met Linus Pauling in 1956, two years after his Nobel Prize in Chemistry. My high school chemistry teacher invited him to Long Beach High to assist in setting up a chemistry lab to complement the course lectures, and also to give a general experimental demonstration to the high school in the auditorium.

Since my teacher knew of my passion for chemistry, I had the opportunity to work with Professor Pauling for many hours. There has never been any doubt in my mind that Linus Pauling was the most important motivating factor accounting for my success as a chemical pharmacologist.”

 

Please consider coming to Corvallis in August. If you can attend the entire conference or just the public session, all of us at the LPI would be delighted to see you.

Sincerely,


 

 


Richard B. van Breemen

Director, Linus Pauling Institute