 | Dr. Steven Hebert |
T H I S
In Memoriam: Dr. Steven Hebert
Discoveries illuminated kidney processes
Dr. Steven C. Hebert, the chair and C.N.H. Long Professor of Cellular and
Molecular Physiology and professor of medicine, died suddenly on April 15 from
apparent cardiovascular disease.
Hebert was a board-certified nephrologist who devoted his career to the science
of renal fluid and electrolyte regulation, through which the kidney keeps the
heart, brain and muscles functioning normally. He made major contributions
to medicine, notably in the cloning of genes that mediate or regulate the transport
of sodium, potassium and calcium across cell membranes.
His work won him election to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 2005,
and his research was the basis for a new class of drugs which are used to treat
hyperparathyroidism, a hormonal disorder that affects many of the more than
one million patients worldwide with end-stage kidney disease.
“Steve Hebert was a dynamic leader of his department and a major force
in nephrology,” said School of Medicine Dean Dr. Robert J. Alpern, who
is also the Ensign Professor of Medicine. “He was thoroughly honest, critical
and resourceful in the pursuit and resolution of major problems in transport
physiology. These qualities earned him worldwide respect, and he will be deeply
missed by the scientific community.”
Hebert was born in 1946 in Rockford, Illinois, and lived for part of his childhood
on the island of Great Inagua in the Bahamas, where his father was a contractor
for the Morton Salt Company. In a profile published in 2006 in the Proceedings
of the National Academies of Sciences, he recalled watching bulldozers pile
dried sea salt into mountains 150 feet high and speculated that his interest
in metabolic salts may have had its genesis there. Surging ahead of his classmates,
he entered Florida State University at age 15 and graduated after three years.
Hebert received his medical degree from the University of Florida in 1970,
and then completed his residency in internal medicine and a nephrology fellowship
at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). He was a faculty member at
UAB, Eastern Virginia Medical School, the University of Texas Medical School
in Houston, Harvard Medical School, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital
(where he ran the Laboratory of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, Renal
Division). In 1997, he was recruited to Vanderbilt University as director of
the Division of Nephrology and the Ann and Roscoe R. Robinson Professor of
Medicine. In 2000 he was offered the chairmanship at Yale, where he could continue
his close collaboration with fellow NAS member Dr. Gerhard Giebisch, a longtime
friend and mentor and now professor emeritus in the department.
With colleagues he launched two biotech companies based in Portland, Maine — MariCal,
a collaboration with scientists in the aquaculture industry, and Pearl Development
Group.
Hebert spent the early part of his career exploring the kidney’s basic
processes, using the tools of traditional physiology, before embarking on new
studies using a technique called expression cloning, in which genes are isolated
according to their function.
In the early 1990s, Hebert’s laboratory made three fundamental discoveries
about how the kidney handles potassium, sodium and calcium. His group identified
a channel that regulates potassium excretion and is involved in Bartter’s
syndrome type II, an inherited disorder that causes sodium and potassium to
be lost in the urine. He and his colleagues also identified two sodium chloride
transporters that are the target sites for important diuretic drugs. His subsequent
discovery of a calcium-sensing receptor known as CaSR led to the development
of a new class of drugs that modulate calcium-receptor activity.
Most recently, with Dr. John Geibel of Yale, Hebert worked on a research project
on the role of the CaSR receptor in the prevention and treatment of acute diarrheal
disease. The two colleagues demonstrated in an animal model that diarrhea could
be reversed almost immediately by activating the CaSR receptor. This treatment
could have a major impact on health problems in developing countries, where
diarrheal disease kills some 3 million infants and children each year.
“It was Steve’s hope that bringing this project to fruition would
be the crowning achievement of his lifelong career efforts,” said Geibel.
Hebert received the Homer W. Smith Award, the top research prize given by the
American Society of Nephrology, the A.N. Richards Award from the International
Society of Nephrology, and the Carl W. Gottschalk Distinguished Lectureship
from the American Society of Physiology. He was inducted into the American
Society for Clinical Investigation in 1988 and the Association of American
Physicians in 1993. Last year, Hebert was named the American coordinator for
the Transatlantic Network on Hypertension-Renal Salt Handling in the Control
of Blood Pressure, an international, $6 million research project on hypertension
funded by the Paris-based Leducq Foundation. This project involved close collaboration
with Yale colleague Dr. Richard P. Lifton, Sterling Professor of Genetics,
and scientists in Switzerland, Mexico and France.
Hebert was known for his devotion to the teaching and training of medical students,
graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. He served on the editorial boards
of all the major journals in nephrology and was invited to write numerous reviews
on the different topics of his work.
Hebert is survived by his wife, Patricia (Robertson) Hebert; his son, Steven
C. Hebert Jr. of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; and two grandchildren, Kyle and Cameron
Hebert, also of Fort Lauderdale. A family service will take place Sunday in
Florida. A memorial service at Yale is being planned for the near future.
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IN MEMORIAM
Dr. Steven Hebert: Discoveries illuminated kidney processes
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Let the sun shine
Campus Notes
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