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Professor Harald Schmidt

Head of Department

Professor Harald Schmidt

Phone:
+61 3 9905 5752

Fax:
+61 3 9905 5851

Email:
Harald.Schmidt@med.monash.edu.au

 

Harald Schmidt, born 1959, is Head of Pharmacology and directs the Centre for Vascular Health at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He graduated in both Pharmacy and Medicine before specialising in Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology. In his first postdoc, he discovered the precursor role of L-arginine for endogenous NO. In the early 90’s he continued this work in Chicago with the 1998 Nobel laureate, Ferid Murad. Back in Germany, he joined a Clinical Centre for Research Excellence at the University of Würzburg. Based on his IP, he founded and led as CEO the spin-off, vasopharm, who’s NOS inhibitors now enter the clinic. Since 2000, as head of Pharmacology in Gießen and co-chair of a collaborative research centre, he focuses on novel cardiovascular disease mechanisms including oxidative stress, and since 2005, at Monash, also on proteome-based diagnostics, molecular imaging and mechanisms-based drugs. He organises several international conferences and edits a major German textbook in Pharmacology and has published in the highest impact scientific journals such as nature (2), science, PNAS (numerous), Cell and EMBO J.

Ten career-best publications

  1. Schmidt, H.H.H.W., Pollock, J. S., Nakane, M., Gorsky, L. D., Förstermann, U. and Murad, F.: Purification of a soluble isoform of guanylyl cyclase-activating-factor synthase. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 88: 365-369, 1991.
  2. Wilcox, C. S., Welch, W. J., Murad, F., Gross, S. S., Taylor, G., Levi, R. and Schmidt, H.H.H.W.: Nitric oxide synthase in macula densa regulates glomerular capillary pressure. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 89: 11993-11997, 1992.
  3. Schmidt, H.H.H.W., Warner, T. D., Ishii, K., Sheng, H. and Murad, F.: Insulin-secretion from pancreatic B-cells caused by L-arginine-derived nitrogen oxides. Science 255: 721-723, 1992, Response ibid. 258: 1376-1378, 1992.
  4. Koch, K.-W., Lambrecht, H.-G., Haberecht, M., Redburn, D. and Schmidt, H.H.H.W.: Functional coupling of a Ca2+/calmodulin dependent nitric oxide synthase and a soluble guanylyl cyclase in vertebrate photoreceptor cells. EMBO J. 13: 3312-3320, 1994.
  5. Schmidt H.H.H.W., Hofmann H., Schindler U., Shutenko Z., Cunningham, D., Feelisch M.  No NO from NO synthase.  Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 93, 13712-13717, 1996
  6. Zabel U, Kleinschnitz C, Oh P, Smolenski A, Nedvetsky P, Kugler P, Walter U, Schnitzer JE, Schmidt HHHW (2002) Calcium-dependent membrane association sensitises soluble guanylyl cyclase to NO. Nature Cell Biol 4, 307-311
  7. Melichar, V.O., Behr-Roussel, D., Zabel, U., Uttenthal, L.O., Rodrigo, J., Rupin, A., Verbeuren, T.J., Kumar, A., Schmidt, H.H.H.W. (2004).  Reduced cGMP signaling associated with neointimal proliferation and vascular dysfunction in late-stage atherosclerosis. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 101:16671-16676
  8. Schmidt, H.H.H.W. and Walter, U.:  NO at work.  Cell:  78: 919-925, 1994
  9. Nedvetsky PI, Sessa WC, Schmidt HHHW (2002) There's NO binding like NOS binding: protein-protein interactions in NO/cGMP signaling. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 99:16510-16512
  10. Evgenov OV, Pacher P, Schmidt PM, Haskó G, Schmidt HHHW, Stasch JP (2006). Nitric oxide-independent stimulators and activators of soluble guanylyl cyclase. Nature Reviews Drug Discovery (in press)