Richard Wurtman

Wurtman retired in 2011, and by that time he had published around 1,000 papers and trained around 300 students and post-docs.

In the 2000s his lab started exploring food components that could help maintain or improve the health of the brain, focusing on choline, uridine, and the omega-3 fatty acid DHA; this work became incorporated into the medical food product, Souvenaid.

Wurtman's patent on using dexfenfluramine, an isomer of fenfluramine, to suppress appetite was also licensed to Interneuron, which licensed the patents to Wyeth; this drug was withdrawn from the market in 1997 after "Phen-fen" was found to be harmful.

In 1994 he was appointed the first Cecil H. Green Distinguished Professor at MIT, and by that time was also a Professor of Neuroscience in MIT’s Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences, and a Professor of Neuropharmacology in the Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology.

In 1994 his lab published work showing that melatonin is a hormone, secreted at night-time, needed for the induction & maintenance of normal sleep.

Wurtman co-founded Interneuron Pharmaceuticals in 1988, which was renamed to Indevus in 2002. Indevus brought an in-licensed product, Trospium chloride, to market before being acquired by Endo Pharmaceuticals in 2009 for $370 million in cash and $267 million in milestones.

Wurtman was involved in the evaluations of aspartame when it was first being introduced as an artificial sweetener; he initially testified on behalf of its manufacturer that it was safe, but subsequent research led him to call, in 1983, for further testing due to his concerns that consuming large amounts (not small amounts) could be harmful.

In 1967 Massachusetts Institute of Technology invited him to open a lab to continue the NIH work in the Department of Nutrition and Food Science, which was the only department doing in vivo work at the time. In the 1980s MIT formed a new department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, which pulled together people working on psychology, neuroscience, and neuroscience, and Wurtman joined it.

Richard Wurtman earned his undergraduate degree at University of Pennsylvania and then went to Harvard Medical School, where he earned his MD in 1960. He did a two year residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, and then joined Julius Axelrod's lab at the National Institutes of Health, which was pioneering studies of neurotransmitters and the ways that drugs affect them.

Richard Wurtman (March 9, 1936 – December 13, 2022) was an American neuroscientist who spent his career doing basic and translational neuroscience research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.