Charles Coutelle

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Charles Coutelle (born  September 5, 1939 in London ) is a German - British doctor and human geneticist . From 1981 he worked as a professor at the Central Institute for Molecular Biology of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR or its successor institution and later moved to Imperial College London , where he retired at the end of 2007 . The focus of his research, with which he made important contributions to the methodological development of prenatal and pre-implantation diagnostics , was the diagnosis and gene therapy treatment of genetic diseases .

Life

Charles Coutelle was born in London in 1939 as the son of the German doctor Carl Coutelle , later professor of pathology at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg , as well as the Ukrainian Jewish doctor Rosa Coutelle. His parents met during the Spanish Civil War , when they both worked as doctors for the International Brigades . Until the end of the Second World War , Charles Coutelle grew up in exile in Great Britain and later, due to the political convictions of his parents, in the German Democratic Republic (GDR).

He studied medicine at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena , where he also received his doctorate in 1963 . He then completed further training to become a specialist in biochemistry . In 1981 he became Professor of Molecular Biology and Head of the Department of Molecular Human Genetics at the Central Institute for Molecular Biology (ZIM) of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR in Berlin , of which he was a corresponding member from 1989 ; In 1994 he was elected a member of the learned society Leibniz Society of Sciences in Berlin . He was the only scientists from an East German research institute founded in 1988 a member of the Human Genome Organization , which aims to decode the human genome as part of the program begun in 1990 Human Genome Project was.

After 1990 he stayed at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC), which was established in 1992 as the successor to the ZIM. Shortly after founding the MDC, he moved to Imperial College in his native London , where he led a research group on gene therapy for cystic fibrosis as a professor at the National Heart and Lung Institute . End of December 2007, he was after 15 years working at Imperial College emeritus .

Scientific work

Charles Coutelle published more than 180 scientific publications in the course of his career , in particular on molecular diagnostics and the gene therapy treatment of genetic diseases . In the 1980s, among other things, he made important contributions to the prenatal diagnosis of phenylketonuria , the most common congenital metabolic disorder , with several publications . In 1989 he demonstrated in a publication using the example of cystic fibrosis and Duchenne muscular dystrophy that, after artificial insemination, DNA diagnosis of hereditary diseases using the genetic material of individual cells is possible. Shortly after its publication, this work was regarded as a fundamental methodological breakthrough for the later development of pre-implantation diagnostics after in vitro fertilization . The main focus of his research activities at Imperial College was prenatal gene therapy for congenital diseases.

Works (selection)

  • The application of molecular human genetics in the analysis and diagnosis of genetic diseases. Urania-Verlag, Leipzig 1990
  • Gene Therapy for Cystic Fibrosis: Strategies, Problems and Perspective. In: Michael Strauss, John A. Barranger: Concepts in Gene Therapy. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1997, pp. 313–343
  • Prenatal gene therapy: scientific basis and ethical aspects of prenatal somatic gene therapy for genetic diseases. Humanitas-Verlag, Dortmund 2005

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ About the effect of ethyl urethane and nitrogen mustard on the growth of cultures of the bacterium Escherichia coli / B. Dissertation at the Medical Faculty of the University of Jena, 1963; Information according to the catalog of the German National Library.
  2. ↑ Coutelle, Charles . In: Werner Hartkopf: The Berlin Academy of Sciences. Its members and award winners 1700–1990. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-05-002153-5 , p. 65.
  3. ^ Victor A. McKusick : HUGO News. The Human Genome Organization: History, Purposes, and Membership. In: Genomics. 5 (2) / 1989. Academic Press, pp. 385-387, ISSN  0888-7543 .
  4. ^ Imperial College London Reporter. Issue 187 of February 7, 2008, p. 15.
  5. ↑ C. Coutelle, C. Williams, A. Handyside, K. Hardy, R. Winston, R. Williamson: Genetic Analysis of DNA from Single Human Oocytes: A Model for Preimplantation Diagnosis of Cystic Fibrosis. In: British Medical Journal. British Medical Association, pp 22-24, ISSN  0959-8138 .
  6. ↑ Test detects cystic fibrosis in embryos. In: New Scientist. Issue 1672 of July 8, 1989.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Coutelle, Charles
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British physician and human geneticist
DATE OF BIRTH September 5, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH London