Research

Günter Schultz made significant contributions to establish molecular pharmacology in Germany. After early work on hormonal regulations of soluble guanylyl cyclase and inhibition of adenylyl cyclase in mammalian tissues, he showed a (relaxing) role of cyclic GMP in smooth muscle. This work was performed at the Institute for Pharmacology at the University of Heidelberg and at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN, USA. In 1983 he returned to the Institute for Pharmacology at Freie Universität Berlin, where he had started as a postdoc in 1963. Here he worked on multiple coupling of membrane receptors to various G proteins (including those of the G12 family) and on the identification of G proteins hormonally activated in the membrane. Other work was concerned with hormonal regulations of voltage-dependent calcium channels and of the large family of Transient Receptor Potential (TRP) channels.