Erich Muscholl

Erich Muscholl

Erich Otto Rudolf Muscholl (born July 3, 1926 in Biskupitz-Borsigwerk, a district of Hindenburg ; † January 17, 2019 in Mainz ) was a German doctor and pharmacologist .

Life

His parents were the general practitioner Erich Georg Günther Muscholl and his wife Johanna geb. Bartsch. Erich attended high school in Glatz . In September 1943, half a year before the planned Abitur, his class was torn apart: the 1925 class came to the Reich Labor Service or the Wehrmacht , Muscholl was deployed as an air force helper in Stettin with the 1926 class . He was at home for the last time in May 1944, when he was drafted into the Wehrmacht. He never saw his home again. Wounded in April 1945, he experienced the end of the war in the hospital. In December 1945 he was released from British captivity. The family met again in Stockum, a district of Werne an der Lippe . Muscholl passed the Abitur examination at the Freiherr-vom-Stein-Gymnasium in Lünen in 1946 . From 1947 to 1952 he studied medicine at the newly founded Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz . From 1950 he also completed his dissertation at the Pharmacological Institute under Gustav Kuschinsky , so that after the state examination in 1952 he was awarded a Dr. med. PhD and became a volunteer assistant at the Pharmacological Institute with a monthly salary of DM 200, -.

A new career began when he joined the University of Edinburgh Pharmacological Institute, directed by John Henry Gaddum , on a British Council Fellowship in 1956 . The questions and methods were completely different from what he had got to know before. He worked in Marthe Vogt's laboratory , and with her the physiology and pharmacology of the sympathetic system became his main subject. Returned to Mainz in 1957 and is now a fully paid assistant, he completed his habilitation with a thesis on the content of the heart in noradrenaline and adrenaline under various experimental conditions for pharmacology and toxicology. In May 1960 he married Hilde Elisabeth Rosa Osburg, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. In 1973 he succeeded Gustav Kuschinsky at the Mainz pharmacology chair. In 1991 he retired.

plant

Muscholl has significantly enriched his knowledge of the sympathetic nervous system and its neurotransmitter norepinephrine , but also the neurosciences in general, primarily through five discoveries.

With Marthe Vogt he clarified how the alkaloid reserpine works : It empties the norepinephrine stores of the postganglionic sympathetic nerve cells and thereby reduces the organs' response to sympathetic activity .

Around 1960, at the same time as Julius Axelrod's group , to which the Freiburg pharmacologist Georg Hertting belonged, he discovered what becomes of norepinephrine after it has been released from the endings of the axons , i.e. the long nerve cell processes: It is restored through active transport taken up in the axons and then stored in intracellular vesicles . It is similar with the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin . The discovery was fundamental for neurophysiology and for understanding the effects of antidepressants and the psychotropic effects of cocaine .

In 1962, together with the Yugoslav pharmacologist Seid Huković , Muscholl developed a test model - an isolated heart with intact sympathetic nerves - which was used for the first time to demonstrate that calcium is necessary for the release of norepinephrine , and with which the effect of numerous drugs on nerve cells analyzed, among other things, the effect of ethanol on ion channels .

In 1968–1970, together with Konrad Löffelholz and Ruth Lindmar, Muscholl discovered that G-protein-coupled receptors , so-called presynaptic receptors, occur at the endings of axons . The prototype found in Mainz was muscarinic receptors at the endings of postganglionic sympathetic axons; their activation inhibits the release of norepinephrine. But presynaptic receptors are also found in many other, if not all, nerve cells and help regulate their function. Opioids and cannabinoids , for example, mainly work via presynaptic receptors.

Finally, Muscholl clarified the mechanism of action of the antihypertensive drug methyldopa . From methyldopa, α-methyldopamine and also α-methylnoradrenaline are produced in the body. The latter is a so-called “false transmitter”, which is stored like the body's own noradrenaline, released and then taken up again in the axons' endings.

Muscholl and the Oxford pharmacologist Hermann Blaschko summarized the current state of research in his field of work in Volume 33 Catecholamines of the Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology .

For many years, Muscholl was co-editor of the specialist journal Naunyn-Schmiedebergs Archiv . As holder of the Mainz Pharmacology Chair, he organized the spring meetings of the German Society for Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology , which traditionally take place in Mainz .

After his retirement, he managed the archive of this society until 2012, which with its founding in 1920 is the second oldest pharmacological society in the world (after the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, founded in 1908 ). In this context, Muscholl typed the diaries of the Berlin pharmacologist Wolfgang Heubner . Heubner kept the diaries almost without interruption from 1917 to 1956; they comprise 28 volumes. They are an important resource on the history of pharmacology, the history of science, and general history.

recognition

In 1983 Muscholl became a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina . In 1984 he received the Feldberg Foundation Prize . In 1996 the German Society for Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology made him an honorary member, and in 2010 it awarded him its highest honor with the Schmiedeberg plaque . In 2008 he received the State Order of Merit, the most prominent award from the State of Rhineland-Palatinate .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Obituary notice. In: vrm-trauer.de. Retrieved January 25, 2019 . 
2. ↑ Erich Muscholl and Marthe Vogt: The action of reserpine on the peripheral sympathetic system. In: The Journal of Physiology 1958; 141: 132-155.
3. ↑ R. Lindmar and E. Muscholl: The effect of pharmaceuticals on the elimination of noradrenaline from the perfusion fluid and the noradrenaline uptake in the isolated heart. In: Naunyn-Schmiedebergs Archive for Experimental Pathology and Pharmacology 1964; 247: 469–492.
4. ^ S. Huković and E. Muscholl: The noradrenaline release from the isolated rabbit heart in the case of sympathetic nerve irritation and its pharmacological influence In: Naunyn-Schmiedebergs archive for experimental pathology and pharmacology 1962; 244: 81-96.
5. ↑ Manfred Göthert and Gisela Thielecke: Inhibition by ethanol of noradrenaline output from peripheral sympathetic nerves: possible interaction of ethanol with neuronal receptors. In: European Journal of Pharmacology 1976; 37: 321-328.
6. ↑ R. Lindmar, K. Löffelholz and E. Muscholl E: A muscarinic mechanism-inhibiting the release of noradrenaline from peripheral adrenergic nerve fibers by nicotinic agents. In: British Journal of Pharmacology 1968; 32: 280-294.
7. ↑ E. Muscholl and KH Rahn: Detection of α-methylnoradrenaline in the urine of hypertensive patients during treatment with α-methyldopa. In: Klinische Wochenschrift 1966; 44: 1412-1413.
8. ↑ H. Blaschko and E. Muscholl: Catecholamines. Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology Volume 33. Berlin, Springer Verlag 1972. ISBN 3-540-05517-7 .
9. ↑ Udo Schagen : From the freedom - and the leeway - the science (ler) in National Socialism: Wolfgang Heubner and the pharmacology of the Charité 1933 to 1945. In: Sabine Schleiermacher and Udo Schagen (ed.): The Charité in the third Reich. Paderborn, Ferdinand Schöningh, 2008, pages 207-227. ISBN 978-3-506-76476-8 .
10. ↑ Member entry by Prof. Dr. Erich Muscholl (with picture) at the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , accessed on July 18, 2016.