Schultz Wins International Honor
for Pioneering Oral Rehydration Research
HOUSTON – (Feb. 1, 2007) – Stanley G. Schultz, M.D., a longtime investigator, educator and administrator at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston, on Jan. 31 received a prestigious international award for pioneering research that led to the development of oral rehydration therapy.
His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand presents Stanley G. Schultz, M.D. (left), with the 2006 Prince Mahidol Award for Medicine at the Grand Palace’s Chakri Throne Hall in Bangkok, Jan. 31.
King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand presented Schultz with the Prince Mahidol Award for Medicine at the Grand Palace’s Chakri Throne Hall in Bangkok.
The annual prize, awarded by the Prince Mahidol Foundation on the recommendation of an international panel of experts, is a tremendous honor for Schultz, said Jerry S. Wolinsky, M.D., interim dean of the UT Medical School.
“It is quite fitting that Dr. Schultz be recognized with the Prince Mahidol award in Medicine for his pioneering work on the physiology of ion transport in the intestine and recognizing the profound implications of his findings for oral rehydration in cholera and other diarrheal diseases,” Wolinsky said. “Clinical applications of his insight have anonymously benefited the lives of millions. We are especially fortunate for all of the lives he has directly touched over the decades that he has tirelessly committed to nurturing our institution.”
Schultz is this year’s only recipient of the Prince Mahidol Award in the field of medicine. Three others received Prince Mahidol Awards in the field of public health. All were recognized for work they did in the 1960s and 1970s to promote the discovery, introduction and widespread use of oral rehydration therapy. The simple, inexpensive treatment for severe diarrhea is estimated to have saved more than 40 million lives in the past 30 years.
The award acknowledges outstanding performance and/or research for the benefit of mankind and is named after Thai Prince Mahidol of Songkla, the father of King Bhumibol. Prince Mahidol, considered the Father of Modern Medicine and Public Health of Thailand, worked continually to upgrade medical care in Thailand. He earned his medical degree and a certificate of public health from Harvard University and practiced medicine in Thailand. In 1929, at age 37, he died of kidney disease.
Ferid Murad, M.D., Ph.D., a 1998 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, and Norman Weisbrodt, Ph.D., professor and interim chairman of the Department of Integrative Biology Pharmacology at the UT Medical School, nominated Schultz for the honor.
Schultz was one of 59 nominated from 29 countries this year.
“Dr. Schultz is a leader in his field, and his work has been very important,” said Murad, director of the Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine’s Center for Cell Signaling and the John S. Dunn Distinguished Chair in Medicine and Physiology. “His research was the basis for providing an effective way to orally hydrate people with diarrheal disease. It also led to rehydration therapy for athletes. The concept of Gatorade is based on his work.”
“We are very proud of Dr. Stanley Schultz for his having received this most prestigious award,” said UT Health Science Center President James T. Willerson, M.D. “It is very well-deserved as he is an outstanding research scientist and educator. At the UT Medical School at Houston, Dr. Schultz has served as a leader in every sense of the word. He is a mentor, educator, scientist, and has given of himself unselfishly serving as dean of our medical school over the past several years. He richly deserves this wonderful award. We are also grateful to our Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Ferid Murad, for his nominating Dr. Schultz to receive this honor.”
Dr. Stanley G. Schultz is greeted by a well-wisher at the 2007 Prince Mahidol Award Conference in Bangkok, Thailand. Schultz, a 2006 recipient of the Prince Mahidol Award in the field of medicine, gave a conference presentation titled "Translational Research: From a Pump Handle to Oral Rehydration Therapy." (Photo by Jeffrey Schultz)
Schultz, an adviser and former dean of the UT Medical School, said it is personally gratifying to receive the Prince Mahidol Award because it credits his basic research as a significant contribution to the human race.
In 1962, while Schultz was a captain in the medical corps at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, he started his career-long investigations on how substances are transported across membranes of the small intestine.
In a series of studies designed to examine the effects of glucose on sodium absorption, he found that when he exposed the mucosal surface of small intestinal tissue to the sugar and sodium, a marked increase in total sodium transport occurred. This indicated that both sugar and sodium were transferred into the tissue simultaneously.
Since it was known that water re-absorption is coupled with solute re-absorption, it followed that increasing sodium and glucose reabsorption by the gut would result in rapid rehydration. To treat dehydration, a person could drink a solution of sodium salts and glucose – a simple, effective and inexpensive cure.
“The mechanism of sodium-coupled solute absorption by the gut is now a standard model for the small intestine and the kidney,” said Schultz, who holds the H. Wayne Hightower Distinguished Professorship in the Medical Sciences and the Fondren Family Chair in Cellular Signaling at the UT Medical School. “It’s turned out to be a universal mechanism by which many nutrients and solutes are taken up by many cells. It is very important from a basic science point of view as well as a translational point of view.”
This is the second time a UT-Houston faculty member has won a Prince Mahidol Award. R. Palmer Beasley, M.D., the dean of The University of Texas School of Public Health for more than 17 years before his 2004 retirement to teaching, won the 1999 award for his groundbreaking hepatitis B research.
The Prince Mahidol award is one of numerous honors Schultz has received for his life-long work on the mechanisms of sodium and glucose-coupled absorption in the small intestine.
Schultz, now 75, was the recipient of the Hoffman-LaRoche Prize for Outstanding Contributions to Gastrointenstinal Physiology in 1978. The American Physiological Society (APS) honored Schultz with the 2003 Daggs Award, a prestigious award given in recognition of distinguished contributions to the science of physiology and to the APS organization. Other awards include the New York University College of Medicine's 2003 Solomon A. Berson Medical Alumni Achievement Award in Clinical Science, an award given for career contributions in clinical and basic science.
Schultz received his M.D. degree from New York University College of Medicine. He taught biophysics at Harvard Medical School and was professor of physiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine before joining the UT Medical School at Houston as professor and chairman of the Department of Physiology in 1979.
Schultz, his wife Harriet, a psychologist, and their two sons traveled to Bangkok to receive the award. Schultz is participating in the 2007 Prince Mahidol Award Conference at Imperial Queen’s Park Hotel and has presented “Translational Research: From a Pump Handle to Oral Rehydration Therapy.”
Upon his return, Schultz plans to continue teaching and will help support programs at the medical school, including the John P. McGovern, M.D., Center for Health, Humanities and the Human Spirit and the newly-established Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences.
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