Professor Michael S. Brown received an M.D. degree in 1966 from the University of Pennsylvania, USA. He was a resident at the Massachusetts General Hospital and a post doctoral fellow with Earl Stadtman at the National Institutes of Health. He is currently Director of the Jonsson Center for Molecular Genetics at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. Professor Brown and his colleague, Dr. Joseph L. Goldstein, discovered the low density lipoprotein (LDL) receptor, which controls cholesterol in blood. They showed that mutations in this receptor cause Familial Hypercholesterolemia, a disorder that leads to premature heart attacks. Their work laid the groundwork for drugs called statins that lower blood cholesterol and prevent heart attacks. Statins are taken daily by more than 20 million people worldwide. Professor Brown and Dr. Goldstein shared many awards for this work, including the U.S. National Medal of Science and the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology.