WE'RE LAUNCHING DUKE'S MOST AMBITIOUS CAMPAIGN IN ITS HISTORY.
Are you MADE FOR THIS?
Robert Lefkowitz
Robert Lefkowitz, Duke’s first Nobel laureate, had a research idea when he came to Duke in 1973. That idea led to his Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2012 and to many of today's most prescribed drugs. Photo by Chris Hildreth

Magic Doesn't Happen Overnight

Developing new treatments can be a decades-long effort
Story by Scott Huler
Dec 01, 2025

In the movies research happens fast: A montage of microscopes and test tubes is quickly followed by, ta-da, a new drug or therapy. In the real world, not so much. A 2019 study found that in cell biology, for example, the lapse from basic biological research (a scientist saying, “You know, I should look into …”) to an adopted molecular biology technique was about 23 years. So when Chancellor's Distinguished Professor Robert Lefkowitz, Duke’s first Nobel laureate, began telling the story of his work, his first words offered no surprise.

“It’s not a short story,” he says. “It goes for decades.”

It started with his recruitment to Duke in 1973 at age 30. He arrived with an idea already brewing: “I had it in my head that there was such a thing as receptors. That is to say, molecules on cells into which drugs and hormones might fit, much like a key into a lock.” If specific receptors received specific molecules, that could explain a lot of how outside substances affected cells.

Others were thinking about the idea, but Lefkowitz couldn’t let it go. So job one was to find a way to study such receptors, if they existed. “The first big breakthrough took only a year,” Lefkowitz says. “Notice I said ‘only.’” He and his lab found they could radioactively label certain beta blockers to stick to a site that could be the receptor Lefkowitz sought. This is basic science; a step forward in one year is breakneck speed. Just the same, the receptors would be single molecules among hundreds of thousands in the cell membrane, so isolating them took another five to eight years.

These receptors activate a cell – a receptor for adrenaline connects with the adrenaline molecule and then the cell works faster. Getting that to happen so they could observe it took until about year 10. Then, around year 15, the lab was able to clone the receptors and have a good look at them. 

“That was a huge ‘Eureka!’ moment,” Lefkowitz says. Because once they could look at the receptor, they realized it looked like rhodopsin, a light-sensitive protein used for vision in the retina. Realizing that G-protein coupled receptors (their name) functioned like sensory receptors helped explain fundamental ways cells interacted with the world. “Not just drugs and hormones,” Lefkowitz says. “But vision, taste, smell, all are mediated by these G-protein coupled receptors.” 

Drug companies began using this knowledge and these techniques to develop drugs that target these receptors. Among the many GPCR drugs on the market today are antihistamines such as cetrizine, the bronchodilator albuterol, painkillers such as codeine and oxycodone, and diabetes drugs such as semaglutide and liraglutide. This last group of drugs – GLP-1 agonists – are being used widely for weight loss under brand names such as Wegovy and Ozempic.

 “Today these receptors are the largest class of targets for drugs,” he says. “They account for about a third of all FDA-approved drugs.”

All because of basic research. Fifty years of research.

“I often would say, ‘It’s not clear whether I’m directing the research or the research is directing me,’” Lefkowitz says. “Each discovery opened up new pathways that led to more discoveries. And it just kept going. And here I am, 52 years later, age 82, and I’m still doing it. “If you ask, ‘What’s the basis for that experiment?’ Well, it’s the experiment we did just a few days ago. What set up that experiment last week? It’s the one from the week before. You can trace it back in an unbroken chain to basically July of 1973.”

Topics