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| Mervyn Maze, M.B., Ch.B. |
7th
FAER Honorary Research Lecture
“Why We Need to Know How Anesthetics Work”
Tuesday, October 16,
2 p.m. to 3 p.m.
Moscone Center,
Gateway Ballroom 102
 t
is my pleasure to announce that Mervyn Maze, M.B.,
Ch.B., has been selected to present the Foundation
for Anesthesia Education and Research (FAER) Honorary
Research Lecture. Dr. Maze has a long tradition of
research contributions to the specialty that continues
to this day. Dr. Maze qualified with a degree in medicine
(conferred with honors) from the University of Cape
Town, South Africa, in 1970, and trained in internal
medicine initially at the Groote Schuur Hospital in
Cape Town and thereafter at Royal Free Hospital in
London.
In 1976 he undertook a three-year postdoctoral research
fellowship in biochemical gastroenterology at Stanford
University in California after which he trained there
in anesthesiology, pain management and critical care
medicine.
He joined the faculty at Stanford in 1981 and was
funded by both the National Institutes of Health and
the Department of Veterans Affairs for the next 20
years to investigate the mechanisms of anesthetic
and analgesic action at the molecular and neural substrate
levels. He rose to the rank of full professor at Stanford
in 1993 and then was recruited back to the United
Kingdom in 1999 and continued to chair the Department
of Anaesthetics, Pain Medicine and Intensive Care
at Imperial College, London, to the present.
In studying the mechanism of the anesthetic action
of alpha-2 adrenergic agonists, he was part of a group
that was the first to prove in a living organism the
Franks and Lieb prediction that species of proteins
were the site of action in a series of studies involving
pharmacologic and genetic manipulations. Having established
the transmembrane signalling pathway involved in the
hypnotic action of alpha-2 agonists, he demonstrated
in collaboration with Nicholas P. Franks, Ph.D., that
the neural substrates for its hypnotic action converge
on the endogenous sleep pathway, providing a clinical
state similar to non-REM sleep, and is associated
with the same physiological benefits of restoration
and repair as is present in natural sleep. This has
led to the adoption of alpha-2 agonists for providing
sedation in the intensive care unit setting. More
recently, following the discovery that xenon is an
NMDA antagonist, Dr. Franks, Daqing Ma, M.D., Ph.D.,
and Dr. Maze have undertaken a series of investigations
to establish that xenon is an effective and nontoxic
neuroprotectant; these findings have led to the preparation
of an investigational new drug application to the
Food and Drug Administration for xenon’s neuroprotective
effects.
Dr. Maze currently serves as the Sir Ivan Magill Chair
of Anaesthesia, Director of Research and Development
for the Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Hospital
Trust, and Campus Dean for Imperial College at Chelsea
and Westminster, London. He has received fellowships
from the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College
of Anaesthetists and the Academy of Medical Sciences.
In 2003 he received the Award for Excellence in Research
from ASA.
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Lee A. Fleisher, M.D., is Robert D. Dripps Professor
and Chair of Anesthesiology and Critical Care,
Professor of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. |
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