Allan Jacob Erslev

Allan Jacob Erslev (born April 20, 1919 in Gentofte , Denmark , † November 12, 2003 in Haverford , Pennsylvania , USA ) was a Danish doctor and physiologist. He is widely considered to be one of the fathers of modern hematology .

Life

Erslev studied medicine from 1937 at the University of Copenhagen , where he also received his doctorate in 1945. After working briefly as a general practitioner in Copenhagen , he emigrated to the USA in 1946 , where he initially practiced in various hospitals in New York . He began his scientific work at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan before moving to New Haven Hospital at Yale University in the early 1950s . There he began with classic experiments that gradually deciphered the regulation of the production of erythrocytes . He spent a few years of his most intensive research at the Thorndike Memorial Laboratory in Boston , where he was also an honorary professor of medicine at Harvard University . In 1959 he was in the Cardeza Foundation for Hematologic Research at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia called the Directorate he held from 1963 until his retirement 1985th

His most scientifically significant discovery in 1953 was that of the hormone erythropoietin , the existence of which he demonstrated in hemic blood plasma. Erslev was able to demonstrate with extremely simple test arrangements that the corresponding plasma accelerated the production of red blood cells after infusion into healthy test animals. This pioneering work soon led to findings that proved the link between the number of red blood cells ( hematocrit ) and the oxygen tension in blood and cell tissue and localized the kidneys as the organs of native EPO production. Erslev recognized very early the therapeutic possibilities in the medical use of EPO in the treatment of renal Änemie, but it should still take about 30 years before the erythropoietin gene decrypted cloned and EPO in large quantities by recombinant biotechnology could be made.

Erslev was married for almost half a century to his wife Betsy (née Lewis; † 1995), with whom he had four children.

literature

• Alfred Larsen: Stamtavle over slægten Erslev , Slagelse 1958