RAHBAR, SAMUEL

RAHBAR, SAMUEL (1929– ), Iranian immunologist. Rahbar was born in Hamadan, Iran, and studied medicine at the University of Teheran, obtaining his doctorate in 1953. After doing hemoglobin research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, he was appointed professor of immunology at the University of Teheran. In 1963, he established the university's Abnormal Hemoglobin Research Laboratory of which he became the director; a number of new abnormal hemoglobins were discovered there. In addition to numerous contributions on the subject in international scientific journals, Rahbar published Principles of Molecular Biology (Persian, 1972). His most important achievement is the discovery of HbA1c in diabetic patients, which was published in 1968. HbA1c became one of the most important biochemical values to be measured in diabetic patients, its measurement being a major contribution to the quality of care of diabetic patients. At the beginning of the Islamic Revolution, he was fired from the University of Tehran and immigrated to U.S. As a professor of diabetes at the City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, California, he worked on the development of "inhibitors of glycation," compounds that may prevent diabetic complications in the kidneys, eyes, and nervous system.