Dr. Salvador Enrique Moncada Seidner was born December 3, 1944 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and was instrumental in understanding the function and metabolism of nitric oxide, as well as its connection to vascular and inflammatory biology. He obtained his MD (1970) University of El Salvador and his PhD (1974) in Pharmacology from the University of London.
Shortly after graduating, Dr. Moncada worked at the Wellcome Research Laboratories as Head of Prostaglandin Research before becoming Director of Research, a position he held from 1986-1995. As Director, he oversaw the discovery and development of anti-epileptic compounds, anti-malarial compounds, migraine treatments, and breast cancer treatments. Additionally, he devoted a great deal of time to studying how nitric oxide affects the cardiovascular, inflammatory, and nervous systems. For his contributions, he received his DSc (Doctor of Science) from the University of London.
Dr. Moncada is often cited as having been snubbed for the Nobel Prize, as the prize was awarded to a later, similar study on nitric oxide. In 1996, he accepted the Director position at the UCL Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research and this led to the creation of several spin-out companies. He had dedicated his time to researching mitochondrial metabolism before leaving in 2010 to run the VIB Vesalius Research Center, an independent research group, in Leuven, Belgium. From 1999-2004 he also designed and developed the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC) in Madrid. In 2014, he took the role of Institute Director of Cancer Sciences at the University of Manchester and became Cancer Domain Director in 2016.
He has numerous awards and accolades. In 2010, he received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II for his Services to Science. Others include the Royal Medal of the Royal Society (1994), Le Grand Prix Annuel Lefoulon-Delalande, from the Institut de France (2002), and The Dohme Lecture, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010). Moncada also has more than 500 peer-reviewed publications to his record. In 2023, he was appointed as the first ambassador of Honduras to the People’s Republic of China, a position he still holds.
REFERENCES:
- https://www.nature.com/articles/27019
- https://histmodbiomed.history.qmul.ac.uk/article/professor-salvador-moncada.html
- https://www.clubofrome.org/member/moncada-salvador/
- https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/11610-salvador-moncada
- https://www.pas.va/en/academicians/ordinary/moncada.html
IMAGE SOURCE:
- Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license
- May 24, 2022
- https://www.flickr.com/photos/157736962@N05/52097102794/
- Author: Lula Official
