Hypertension

BIOGRAPHY

Harald Schmidt, born 1959, is Head of Pharmacology and directs the Centre for Vascular Health at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He graduated in both Pharmacy and Medicine before specializing in Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology. In his first postdoc, he discovered the precursor role of L-arginine for endogenous NO. In the early 90’s he continued this work in Chicago with the 1998 Nobel laureate, Ferid Murad. Back in Germany, he joined a Clinical Centre for Research Excellence at the University of Würzburg. Based on his IP, he founded and led as CEO the spin-off, vasopharm, whose NOS inhibitors now enter the clinic. Since 2000, as head of Pharmacology in Gießen and co-chair of a collaborative research centre, he focuses on novel cardiovascular disease mechanisms including oxidative stress, and since 2005, at Monash, also on proteome-based diagnostics, molecular imaging and mechanisms-based drugs. He organizes several international conferences and edits a major German textbook in Pharmacology.