Salomon Zender Langer is a pharmacologist known for his prominent work in neurotransmission and drug discovery. He was born in 1936 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Salomon Zender Langer is a pharmacologist known for his prominent work in neurotransmission and drug discovery. He was born in 1936 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
His parents were Polish Jews who immigrated to Argentina in the early 1930s. He grew up in Buenos Aires, and graduated in 1960 from the School of Medicine of Buenos Aires University with the Gold Medal (a distinction awarded to the highest grade point average over medical studies). He married Martha Faigelbaum in 1960 and they had three daughters.
In 1962 he received a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to continue his studies at Tulane University, New Orleans, and his fellowship was prolonged to join the Department of Pharmacology at Harvard University from 1963 until the end of 1966. His research was on the mechanisms involving denervation supersensitivity. [1] with Ullrich Trendelenburg [2] [3] .
From 1966 to 1967 he received a fellowship from the Heymans Institute, Ghent, Belgium.
From 1967 to 1969 he received a fellowship as a Senior Research Fellow to work at the Institute of Animal Physiology, Cambridge, England, with Marthe Vogt on norepinephrine(NE) uptake and the regulation of NE release elicited by nerve stimulation as well as the metabolic fate of the released neurotransmitter. [4] He also worked with Leslie Iversen at the Department of Pharmacology, Cambridge University. [5] [6]
In 1969, he returned to Argentina where he was appointed Director of the Institute for Pharmacological Research. His work led to the discovery of the presynaptic inhibitory Alpha-adrenoceptors on noradrenergic nerve terminals and their role in the modulation of the NE release during nerve stimulation [7]
In 1974, Dr. Langer discovered the Alpha-2 adrenoceptors [8] and characterized the pharmacological differences between alpha 1-adrenoceptors and alpha 2-adrenoceptors, establishing that the latter corresponded to the presynaptic auto-receptors [9]
In 1975-1976, he provided the first extensive and rigorous evidence "in vitro" [10] [11] and "in vivo" of co-transmission (norepinephrine and adenosine triphosphate or ATP) in the cat's nictitating membrane.
In 1976, Dr. Langer became Head of the Department of Pharmacology at the Wellcome Research Laboratories in Beckenham, Kent, UK.
In 1977 he was appointed Director of Biology at fr:Synthélabo Research in Paris, France, where he was later to become the Research Director and Vice-President. The research team directed by Dr. Langer discovered between the years 1979-1980 a specific, high-affinity binding site for 3H-imipramine [12] and later 3H-paroxetine, [13] which is associated with the serotonin transporter in the brain and in blood platelets of various species, including man. 3H-paroxetine was subsequently used as a marker in the purification of the serotonin transporter for cloning and expression.
Throughout the 1980s Dr. Langer continued his work on presynaptic autoreceptors regulating norepinephrine, dopamine and serotonin (5-HT) release and reported the interactions in neurotransmission between the neuronal transporter and the corresponding autoreceptor. [14] [15] [16]
In 1984 he was listed among the 250 most-cited scientific primary authors according to the ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) Citation Index [17]
During the 23 years at Synthelabo, Dr. Langer discovered and developed five compounds : Diltiazem, Betaxolol, Alfusozin, Zolpidem and Mizolastine.
From 2000 to 2007 Dr Langer joined Compugen, an Israeli biotechnology company, as Senior Vice-President of Molecular biology and drug discovery.
After moving to Israel, in 2014 Dr. Langer founded the drug company Synaptic Pharma Ltd to develop Eliprodil, a noncompetitive antagonist of the ionotropic NMDA receptor for a rapid onset antidepressant action in severely drug-resistant depressed patients.
Dr Langer is among the highly cited researchers (ISI) in Pharmacology since 1981 (total citations 34640 in October 2025). [18]
Dr Langer has published more than 450 scientific articles and is holder of more than twenty patents in France, USA and Japan. He was editor of fourteen books and member of editorial boards of numerous scientific journals.
These discoveries significantly advanced the understanding of neurotransmission mechanisms, receptor pharmacology, and facilitated the development of key drugs in cardiovascular, neurological, psychiatric and allergic disease therapies.
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