The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) will make Professor Mervyn Maze, from Imperial College London, the recipient of its Excellence in Research award for 2003 at the Society's Annual Meeting on 13 October in San Francisco.

In addition to his clinical work performed as a Consultant Anaesthetist at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, Professor Maze's body of research over the last 20 years has contributed to a better understanding of the scientific basis for the mechanisms whereby anaesthetics produce their sleep-inducing effects.

Professor Maze began his career in medicine after graduation from the University of Cape Town and served two years as a house officer in respiratory medicine and gastroenterology at Groote Schuur Hospital. Following this, he trained in internal medicine at the Royal Free Hospital in London, and then moved to Stanford University, California, to train in basic science.

At Stanford, he worked as a postdoctoral research fellow studying functional membrane proteins in the cells lining the small intestine. He has since applied these discoveries to investigations of related proteins which were possible targets for anaesthetic drugs. His basic research has directly resulted in clinical advances in patients ranging from those with chronic pain to those requiring artificial ventilation in the intensive care setting.

In 1999, Professor Maze became the Sir Ivan Magill Professor of Anaesthetics at Imperial College London, where he continues his research into the mechanisms of anaesthetic action. Together with Professor Nick Franks, a biophysicist from Imperial College London, he discovered that while different anaesthetics affect different receptors in the brain, they converge on the same neuronal pathways producing a common behavioural endpoint. T
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Contact: Tony Stephenson
at.stephenson@imperial.ac.uk
44-207-594-6712
Imperial College London
9-Oct-2003