Bernardo Houssay

Bernardo Alberto Houssay was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on April 10, 1887, one of eight children of Dr. Alberto and Clara Houssay, who had emigrated to Argentina from France. His father was a barrister. His early education was at a private school, the Colegio Britanico. He entered pharmacy school at the University of Buenos Aires at the age of 14, graduating in 1904. He continued into medical school, graduating in 1907. After graduating he took a position in the physiology department and completed his thesis on pituitary extracts, which won a university prize.

In 1910 he was appointed Professor of Physiology in the university's School of Veterinary Medicine. During this time he continued his hospital practice, becoming the Chief Physician at Alvear Hospital in 1913. In 1915 he took charge of the Laboratory of Experimental Pathology at the National Public Health Laboratory in Buenos Aires. In 1919 he became the chair of the Department of Physiology at the University of Buenos Aires. In 1943 he was removed from his position by the Peronist Argentine government for expressing his opinion that Argentina should be more democratic. Although he recieved many invitations from overseas he remained in Argentina and continued his research, setting up the privately funded Instituto de Biologia y Medicina Experimental. In 1955 he was restored to his university position when a new government took power.

Although Houssay researched many aspects of physiology, his primary research was endocrine glands. Endocrine glands are a glands that secrete hormones directly into the blood without a duct. Endocrine glands include the pitutary gland, the pancreas, ovaries, testes, thyroid, and the adrenal glands. His studies of the anterior pituitary gland led him to discover the relationship between its hormones and carbohydrate metabolism.

In 1947 he won the Nobel Prize for Physiology in Medicine, which he shared with Carl and Gerty Cori, for "his discovery of the part played by the hormone of the anterior pituitary and the metabolism of sugar". Other honors won by Houssay include twenty five honorary degrees and membership in the Argentine National Academy of Medicine, the Academy of Letters, the National Academy of Sciences of Buenos Aires and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

He died on September 21, 1971.

References:

Parker, William Belmont; Argentines of Today, Hispanic Society of America, 1920

Bernardo Houssay Wikipedia Entry

Bernardo Houssay Nobel Biography

Charles Best

Charles Herbert Best was born on February 27, 1899 in West Pembroke, Maine. He was the only son of Luella Fisher and Dr. Herbert Best, who were Canadians from Nova Scotia. His father was a country doctor and restless with his country practice moved twice during Best's youth. Best went through public and high school in Pembroke, Maine. After a year at Harbord Collegiate, making up studies in French and Canadian history, he entered the University of Toronto in 1916. He joined the Canadian Army in 1918, after first being rejected because of a heart murmur. He was discharged in 1919, having not seen combat, and returned to the University of Toronto.

In 1921 Best, having just completed a bachelors with honors in physiology and biochemistry was assigned, along with his friend Clark Noble, to work as an assistant to Frederick Banting who wanted to conduct an experiment that involved blocking the pancreatic ducts of dogs. Blocking the pancreatic duct, through which pancreatic, digestive juices drain into the small intestine, has the effect of destroying most of the pancreas, leaving only the cells of the islets of Langerhans, specialized cells within the pancreas. Banting wanted to isolate these cells in order to look for a hormone that would relieve diabetes. Diabetes is a disease caused by the lack of the hormone insulin. Insulin causes cells to uptake sugar out of the blood stream, and without it blood glucose levels can rise to dangerous levels which cause damage.

Banting was only given limited laboratory space and could only accommodate one of his assistants, and there is an apocryphal story about Best and Noble flipping a coin to determine who would be Banting's assistant. Best assisted Banting in operating on dogs to remove their pancreata and then treating them with extracts they had obtained from isolated islet of Langerhans cells, which they called "Isletin". They had a great deal of trouble because their laboratory space, during the hot summer, was not very clean and many of the dogs died of infection. It was not until August that they were able to lower the blood sugar of a experimental dog with injections of isletin, whereas injections of liver and spleen extracts had no affect. By December, 1921 Banting and Best were able to obtain purified insulin by extracting beef pancreas with acidic alcohol. In 1923 Banting and John Macleod, who had arranged for the laboratory space, were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine "for the discovery of insulin". Best was not included because he had not yet finished his doctorate. Banting was upset by Best's exclusion from the prize and shared his prize money with him.

Best succeeded Macleod as professor of physiology at the University of Toronto in 1929 and during World War II he was involved with a program that obtained and used dried human serum. During his later years he served as an advisor for the medical research program of the World Health Organization. Honors awarded to Best include election to the Royal Society in Britian and the Royal Society of Canada, as well as 18 honorary degrees from universities around the world.

Best died on March 31, 1978.


References:

Best, Henry B. M.; Margaret and Charley: The Personal Story of Dr. Charles Best, the Co-Discoverer of Insulin; Dundurn Press Ltd.; 2003

Charles Herbert Best Wikipedia Entry

Percy Lavon Julian

Percy Lavon Julian was born on April 11, 1899 in Montgomery, Alabama, the oldest of six children of a railway clerk and a school teacher. Learning was emphasized by his parents and his two brothers went on to become physicians and his three sisters received masters degrees. After elementary school he attended the State Normal School for Negros. Upon graduation he moved to Greencastle, Indiana, where he attended DePauw University. Because of his inadequate preparation he was admitted as a "sub-freshman" and in addition to his college classes he had to take classes at a nearby high school. He supported his education by working as a waiter and digging ditches.

Julian graduated from DePauw in 1920 as valedictorian of his class and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. After graduation, following the advice of his teachers, he took a position as a chemistry teacher at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. He taught at Fisk for two years and in 1922 he won an Austin Fellowship that allowed him to go to Harvard University where in 1823 he received a M.A. Unable to continue at Harvard due to the color of his skin, joined the faculty at West Virginia State College. In 1928 he became the head of the chemistry department at Howard University in Washington D. C.

In 1929 Julian received a Rockefeller foundation grant that allowed him to travel to Vienna where he worked in the laboratory of Ernst Spath at the University of Vienna. In Vienna, Julian was able to finish his Ph.D. in 1931, working on natural products chemistry and completing a thesis on the alkaloids of the Corydalis cava. After finishing his Ph.D. Julian returned to Howard University, where he taught for two more years. In 1933 he returned to DePauw University as a research fellow. At DePauw, working with Joseph Pikl, a colleague of his from Vienna, Julian completed the total synthesis of physostigmine, a reversible inhibitor of cholinesterase. It is used to treat myasthenia gravis, glaucoma and Alzheimer's disease.

Frustrated because he was unable to obtain a faculty position at DePauw, Julian went into industry, where in 1936 he got a job as the director of research for soya products at Glidden in Chicago, Illinois. He worked at Glidden for 18 years developing products from soya beans which resulted in numerous patents including a paper coating and a fire retardant foam widely used during World War II. His research made possible the production of large quantities of steroid hormones such as progesterone and hydrocortisone at low cost. Around 1950 the Julian family moved from Chicago to Oak Park, Illinois. The first African-American family in the white neighborhood, their house was twice bombed. These attacks galvanized the community and a community group was formed to support the Julians

In 1953 he left Glidden and established Julian Laboratories, which specialized in producing synthetic cortisone. Using wild yams from Mexico, which he found were a better source of steroids than soya, Julian established Labratorios Julian de Mexico in Mexico city which cultivated the yams and shipped them to Oak Park, Illinois for refinement. In 1961 he sold the Oak Park plant to Smith, Kline and French for 2.3 million dollars.

Among the honors that Julian received was the Springham Medal from the NAACP and election to the National Academy of Science in 1973, as the second African-American to receive that honor.

Julian died on April 19, 1975.

References:

Witkop, Bernhard, "Percy Lavon Julian" in Biographical Memoirs, Vol. 52, National Academy Press, 1980

"Percy Julian" at blackinventor.com

Percy Lavon Julian, Wikipedia entry

Philip Showalter Hench

Philip Showalter Hench was born on February 28, 1896, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Jacob Bixler Hench and Clara Showalter. He attended local local schools and then Lafayette College, graduating in 1916. After graduation he enlisted in the U. S. Army Medical Corps. and was transfered to the reserves so that he could finish his medical training. In 1920 he received his doctorate in medicine from the University of Pittsburgh and he did an internship at St. Francis Hospital. After his internship he became a fellow at the Mayo Foundation, the graduate school of the University of Minnesota's School of Medicine. In 1923 he became an assistant in the Mayo Clinic's Department of Rheumatic Diseases, and three years later he became the director. Between 1928 and 1929 he studied abroad at Freiburg University and the von Muller Clinic in Munich. He was appointed instructor for the Mayo Foundation in 1928, assistant professor in 1932, associate professor in 1935 and professor of medicine in 1947.

During the 1920s the cause of rheumatoid arthritis had yet to be discovered and it was thought to be an infectious disease. One of Hench's patients with the disease, a sixty-nine year old doctor had started to improve the day after he became jaundiced. The jaundice passed in 4 weeks, but the improvement lasted for seven months. Hench documented patients with similar improvements following jaundice and noted the the improvement occurred no matter the cause of the jaundice and he had found that the greater the jaundice the greater the improvement. By 1938 he had collected a further 31 cases in which patients with rheumatoid arthritis who had improved following jaundice and he had also found improvements in pregnant and post-surgical patients and patients suffering from infections. Hench attributed the improvements to a unknown substance he called "Substance X", which he was unable to isolate.

A break came when, after realizing that patients who have been in surgery have their adrenal glands stimulated, Hench turned his attention to the adrenals to find the substance. Hench collaborated with Edward Kendall, a professor physiological chemistry at the Mayo Clinic. Kendall was a prolific researcher, who during the 1930s was deeply involved in adrenal gland research. Kendall had isolated a number of compounds from the adrenal glands of cattle that showed biological activity. By 1941 Hench and Kendall, hypothesized that one of these substances, "Compound E", which was shown to preserve life in adrenaectomized animals, might be substance X. However they were unable to test their hypothesis because of the war and lack of Compound E.

During World War II, Hench became the Chief of the Medical Service and Director of the U.S. Army's Rheumatism Center. At that time the U. S. Government became interested in adrenal research due to rumors that Luftwaffe pilots were able to fly at altitudes of over 40,000 feet due to injections of adrenal extracts, and intelligence reports that Germany was buying large numbers of cattle adrenal glands from Argentina. With this interest National Research Council set up a committee to share research involving adrenal hormones and it was decided that due to the scarcity of adrenal hormones available from natural sources, they must look to synthetic sources. It took until 1944 for Compound E to be synthesized and then only in amounts too small for the synthesis to be commercially viable.

In April 1948 Merck, the company who had completed the synthesis, convened a conference of endocrinologists who were interested in Compound E and split the 9 grams of the compound that they had up among the participants. Hench attempted to get some of this for his patients with rheumatoid arthritis, but he was unable to get any. Hench persisted and in September 1948 he was able to get 5 grams of Compound E from Merck. For his first patient Hench chose "Ms. Gardner", a 29-year old with severe, erosive rheumatoid arthritis. She had been an inpatient at the Mayo Clinic for 2 months, refusing to be discharged until she felt better. Using an initial dose of 50 milligrams, which was followed with four daily injections of 100 milligrams, the patient showed improvement and was able to walk out of the hospital after this treatment. Hench continued his teatments on another 14 patient over the following months and all showed improvement. Hench shared his results at the weekly meeting of the Mayo Clinic scientific staff on April 13, 1949. The meeting was packed and the presentation, which included a dramatic "before and after" film, was followed by a standing ovation. Word of the breakthrough quickly leaked to the scientific press. Hench renamed "Compound E" cortisone, the name it bears today.

In 1950 Hench, Kendall and Tadeus Reichstein, a Swiss chemist who had collaborated with Hench and Kendall in their research, were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology for "their discoveries relating to the hormones of the adrenal cortex, their structure and biological effects". Hench also won the Lasker award in 1949. He retired in 1957 and in his retirement worked with the Nobel Foundation to set up the Nobel Conferences, high level conferences that deal with the implications of scientific advance.

Hench died on March 30, 1965.

References:

Lloyd, M.; "Philip Showalter Hench, 1896-1965"; Rheumatology (2002) 41:582-584

Bowden, Mary Ellen; Pharmaceutical Achievers: The Human Face of Pharmaceutical Research
; Chemical Heritage Association; 2005

Philip Showalter Hench Nobel Prize biography