Bill Catterall to Receive 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award from IUPHAR

Bill Catterall, Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Washington, will receive the 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Union for Basic & Clinical Pharmacology (IUPHAR) in recognition of his accomplishments in research and academic leadership in Pharmacology. With colleagues in his laboratory in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Washington, Catterall discovered the voltage-gated sodium and calcium channel proteins, which initiate electrical and chemical signaling in nerve and muscle cells. His subsequent work contributed much to understanding their structure, function, regulation, molecular pharmacology, and roles in diseases. In 2011, Catterall and his colleagues reported the first high-resolution structure of a voltage-gated sodium channel, and his work in structural biology has provided new insights into voltage-dependent activation and inactivation, ion conductance, and molecular pharmacology of the sodium and calcium channels at the atomic level. His recent work has also led to new understanding of inherited forms of periodic paralysis, epilepsy, and autism that are caused by mutations in sodium and calcium channel genes. Catterall served as Chair of the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Washington from 1984 to 2016, as Editor of the journal Molecular Pharmacology from 1985 to 1990, and as a member of the IUPHAR Nomenclature Committee that develops systematic nomenclatures for receptors, ion channels, protein kinases, and other major drug targets from 1998 to 2016. Catterall will receive this award at the World Congress of Pharmacology in Glasgow in July.