Henry Jay Forman

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Henry Jay Forman is both Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry at the University of California, Merced. [1] and Research Professor Emeritus of Gerontology at the University of Southern California (USC) Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. [2] He is a specialist in free radical biology and chemistry, antioxidant defense, and pioneered work in redox signaling including the mechanisms of induced resistance to oxidative stress.

Contents

Biography

He received his degrees from Queens College of the City University of New York [3] and Columbia University. [4] After holding a Post-Doctoral position at Duke University, he held faculty positions in biochemistry, physiology, molecular pharmacology, toxicology, pediatrics, and pathology. He was previously a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania, [5] the USC School of Medicine [6] and the USC School of Pharmacy [7] and then moved to the University of Alabama, Birmingham, School of Public Health, [8] where he was the Chairman of Environmental Health Sciences. He was one of the founding faculty at the University of California, Merced. [9]

Career

Forman has focused almost his entire career on redox (free radical) biology and chemistry He has worked on the biological generation and defense against oxidants and on the cellular use of oxidants as physiologically important signals. His work contains over 200 publications. [10] His major current research focuses on understanding how aging causes increased susceptibility to air pollution.

He is the Past President of the Society for Free Radical Biology and Medicine [11] and Executive Editor of Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics. [12] He served as the Governor’s appointed scientist on the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District Governing Board. [13] He is a Fellow of the Society of Free Radical Biology and Medicine (now Society for Redox Biology and Medicine).

Forman was the recipient of the Society for Free Radical Research - Europe Award Lectureship and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Redox biology and Medicine. He has served on the Scientific Policy Committee of the American Physiological Society. [14]

Related Research Articles

Antioxidants are compounds that inhibit oxidation, a chemical reaction that can produce free radicals. Autoxidation leads to degradation of organic compounds, including living matter. Antioxidants are frequently added to industrial products, such as polymers, fuels, and lubricants, to extend their usable lifetimes. Foods are also treated with antioxidants to forestall spoilage, in particular the rancidification of oils and fats. In cells, antioxidants such as glutathione, mycothiol or bacillithiol, and enzyme systems like superoxide dismutase, can prevent damage from oxidative stress.

The free radical theory of aging states that organisms age because cells accumulate free radical damage over time. A free radical is any atom or molecule that has a single unpaired electron in an outer shell. While a few free radicals such as melanin are not chemically reactive, most biologically relevant free radicals are highly reactive. For most biological structures, free radical damage is closely associated with oxidative damage. Antioxidants are reducing agents, and limit oxidative damage to biological structures by passivating them from free radicals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oxidative stress</span> Free radical toxicity

Oxidative stress reflects an imbalance between the systemic manifestation of reactive oxygen species and a biological system's ability to readily detoxify the reactive intermediates or to repair the resulting damage. Disturbances in the normal redox state of cells can cause toxic effects through the production of peroxides and free radicals that damage all components of the cell, including proteins, lipids, and DNA. Oxidative stress from oxidative metabolism causes base damage, as well as strand breaks in DNA. Base damage is mostly indirect and caused by the reactive oxygen species generated, e.g., O2− (superoxide radical), OH (hydroxyl radical) and H2O2 (hydrogen peroxide). Further, some reactive oxidative species act as cellular messengers in redox signaling. Thus, oxidative stress can cause disruptions in normal mechanisms of cellular signaling.

The USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology is one of the seventeen academic divisions of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, focusing on undergraduate and graduate programs in gerontology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy</span> University in Bucharest, Romania

Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy or University of Medicine and Pharmacy Bucharest, commonly known by the abbreviation UMFCD, is a public health sciences university in Bucharest, Romania. It is one of the largest and oldest institutions of its kind in Romania. The university uses the facilities of over 20 clinical hospitals all over Bucharest.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louis Ignarro</span> American pharmacologist

Louis José Ignarro is an American pharmacologist. For demonstrating the signaling properties of nitric oxide, he was co-recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Robert F. Furchgott and Ferid Murad.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irwin Fridovich</span> American biochemist (1929-2019)

Irwin Fridovich was an American biochemist who, together with his graduate student Joe M. McCord, discovered the enzymatic activity of copper-zinc superoxide dismutase (SOD),—to protect organisms from the toxic effects of superoxide free radicals formed as a byproduct of normal oxygen metabolism. Subsequently, Fridovich's research group also discovered the manganese-containing and the iron-containing SODs from Escherichia coli and the mitochondrial MnSOD (SOD2), now known to be an essential protein in mammals. He spent the rest of his career studying the biochemical mechanisms of SOD and of biological superoxide toxicity, using bacteria as model systems. Fridovich was also Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry at Duke University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GPX4</span> Mammalian protein found in Homo sapiens

Glutathione peroxidase 4, also known as GPX4, is an enzyme that in humans is encoded by the GPX4 gene. GPX4 is a phospholipid hydroperoxidase that protects cells against membrane lipid peroxidation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alan R. Saltiel</span>

Alan Robert Saltiel is an American endocrinologist and biochemist. He is Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology, holds the Maryam Ahmadian Endowed Chair in Metabolic Health, the Director of the UCSD/UCLA Diabetes Research Center and Director of the Institute for Diabetes and Metabolic Health at the University of California, San Diego.

Caleb Ellicott Finch is an American academic who is a professor at the USC Davis School of Gerontology. Finch's research focuses on aging in humans, with a specialization in cell biology and Alzheimer's disease.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kelvin Davies</span>

Kelvin J. A. Davies is the James E. Birren Chair of Gerontology at the USC Davis School of Gerontology with a joint appointment in Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences in biology. He is involved in researching free radical biology, oxidative stress, and aging; and was an early member of the study of protein oxidation, proteolysis, and altered gene expression during stress-adaptation; he also found the role of free radicals in mitochondrial adaptation to exercise, and demonstrated the role of diminished oxidative stress-adaptive gene expression in aging.

Victor Darley-Usmar is a free-radical biologist and biochemist, the UAB Endowed Professor in Mitochondrial Medicine and Pathology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Darley-Usmar also contributed to a book titled Microbes, Bugs & Wonder Drugs, a science book written for young readers and their families.

Ruth Leah Weg was an American academic who worked as a professor at the USC Davis School of Gerontology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rafael Radi</span>

Rafael Radi is an Uruguayan biochemist and biomedical scientist that has extensively worked to elucidate molecular mechanisms by which free radicals, oxidants and nitric oxide participate in human pathologies. In particular, he has made relevant contributions to unravel how the signal transducing free radical nitric oxide can evolve into toxic species via the formation of secondary nitric oxide-derived oxidants. His work has characterized reactions of oxidizing species with biological targets, the role of mitochondrial dysfunction is the alterations of cellular redox homeostasis and the impact of these biochemical processes in disease states. He has studied the actions of synthetic compounds in redox-based therapeutics, including in cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases. This work has also contributed to understand the redox biology of host cell interactions with intracellular pathogens and the impact in the control of infectious diseases. His seminal paper related to the biochemical actions of peroxynitrite, a potent oxidant and nucleophile formed secondary to the diffusion-controlled reaction of nitric oxide with superoxide radicals together with Joe S. Beckman, Kent Bush and Bruce A. Freeman in 1991 has been selected as a JBC Classics due to its influence in the field.

Barry Halliwell is an English biochemist, chemist and university administrator, specialising in free radical metabolism in both animals and plants. His name is included in the "Foyer–Halliwell–Asada" pathway, a cellular process of hydrogen peroxide metabolism in plants and animals, named for the three principal discoverers, with Christine Foyer and Kozi Asada. He moved to Singapore in 2000, and served as Deputy President of the National University of Singapore (2006–15), where he continues to hold a Tan Chin Tuan Centennial professorship.

Katrina Miranda is an associate professor of biochemistry at the University of Arizona. She works on nitric oxide and their role in diseases like breast cancer, stroke and chronic pain.

Tameka A. Clemons is an African American biochemist at Tilman J. Fertitta Family College of Medicine at University of Houston in Houston, Texas. Clemons holds the title of Clinical Associate Professor of Biochemistry in the Department of Biomedical Sciences. Her research focuses on exploring the link between Type II diabetes and Alzheimer's disease by analyzing the aberrant biochemical signaling networks in pancreatic beta-cells and neuronal cells that leads to cell death in Type II diabetes and Alzheimer's Disease. Clemons was one of the inaugural recipients of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Minority Ph.D. Program Fellowship and in 2020, she was named one of the top 100 Inspiring Black Scientists in America by CellPress.

Redox Biology is an open-access peer-reviewed scientific journal and an official journal of the Society for Redox Biology and Medicine and the Society for Free Radical Research-Europe. The journal covers research on redox biology, aging, signaling, biological chemistry and medical implications of free radicals for health and disease. According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal's 2020 impact factor is 11.799.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helmut Sies</span> German biomedical research professor

Helmut Sies is a German physician, biochemist and university professor. He was the first to demonstrate the existence of hydrogen peroxide as a normal attribute of aerobic life in 1970, and he introduced the concept of Oxidative stress in 1985. He also worked on the biological strategies of antioxidant defense and the biochemistry of nutritional antioxidants.

Vincent Joseph Cristofalo (1933–2006) was an American cell biologist.

References

  1. ↑ "University of California, Merced". Ucmerced.edu. 2014-02-20. Retrieved 2014-02-26.
  2. ↑ "USC Davis School of Gerontology". Gero.usc.edu. 2013-12-12. Retrieved 2014-02-26.
  3. ↑ "QC Queens College". Qc.cuny.edu. Retrieved 2014-02-26.
  4. ↑ "Columbia University in the City of New York". Columbia.edu. Retrieved 2014-02-26.
  5. ↑ "Penn: University of Pennsylvania". Upenn.edu. 2014-02-13. Retrieved 2014-02-26.
  6. ↑ "Home". Keck.usc.edu. Retrieved 2014-02-26.
  7. ↑ "USC School of Pharmacy | USC". Pharmacyschool.usc.edu. 2013-10-31. Retrieved 2014-02-26.
  8. ↑ "Home | UAB School of Public Health". Soph.uab.edu. Retrieved 2014-02-26.
  9. ↑ "University of California, Merced". Ucmerced.edu. 2014-02-20. Retrieved 2014-02-26.
  10. ↑ "Publications - HJ Forman" . Retrieved 2014-02-26.
  11. ↑ "SFRBM". SFRBM. Retrieved 2014-02-26.
  12. ↑ Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics - Journal - Elsevier. Journals.elsevier.com. 2015-07-01. Retrieved 2014-06-04.
  13. ↑ "San Joaquin Valley APCD Home Page". Valleyair.org. Retrieved 2014-02-26.
  14. ↑ "American Physiological Society > American Physiological Society". The-aps.org. Retrieved 2014-02-26.

Further reading

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