Nobel Laureate and Duke University School of Medicine professor Dr. Peter Agre announced this morning that he will be taking steps necessary to evaluate a possible run for the Senate from Minnesota. As a result, he will take a leave of absence from the positions of Vice Chancellor for Science and Technology and James B. Duke Professor of Cell Biology at the Duke University Medical Center later this summer.
Agre's family has lived in Minnesota for four generations, he was born and raised there, and he graduated from Augsburg College in Minneapolis. Agre came to the Duke School of Medicine in 2005 after spending more than 25 years at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
"Everybody who knows me well knows that Minnesota is and always has been close to my heart," says Agre, who travels there at least several times a year to spend time with family and speak at colleges or other venues. "I've always tried to work for the benefit of humanity as a physician and scientist, and it has always been my hope to do so as a public servant. Although it will be difficult to take a leave from my duties at Duke, I simply can't pass up this chance to perhaps pursue my
long interest in public service for a state that is home to me in many ways."
At Duke, Agre has been serving as interim chair of the Biochemistry
Department during the search for a new head of the department, and has been director of the Medical Scientist Training Program since 2006. He has a small but active research laboratory in Cell Biology investigating the water channel proteins which he and his colleagues first discovered in
1991. That discovery garnered him a share of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In his administrative duties at Duke, he is charged with helping to advance and strengthen science.
"We are pleased to support Peter in his pursuit of this longstanding interest of his," says Victor J. Dzau, M.D., Chancellor of Health Affairs at Duke University and President and CEO of Duke University Health System.
"We have valued his participation in our community, but Duke's loss could be the country's and Minnesota's gain."
Agre will likely establish legal residency in Minnesota over the summer. The election is scheduled for November 2008.