The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.
Brown, Michael Stuart
1941–, American molecular geneticist, b. New York City, M.D. Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1966. He worked (1968–71) as a researcher at the National Institutes of Health before going to the Southwestern Medical School of the Univ. of Texas at Dallas. Brown and colleague Joseph L. Goldstein researched cholesterol metabolism and discovered that human cells have low-density lipoprotein (LDL) receptors that extract cholesterol from the bloodstream. The lack of sufficient LDL receptors is a major cause of cholesterol-related diseases. In 1985, Goldstein and Brown were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
