Ernest Fourneau

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Ernest Fourneau (born October 4, 1872 in Biarritz , † August 5, 1949 in Ascain ) was a French chemist (organic chemistry) and pharmacologist . He headed pharmacological research at the Pasteur Institute and was a pioneer with his colleagues in the development of local anesthetics , sulfonamides and antihistamines .

Portrait of Ernest Fourneau by Jean-Claude Fourneau

Life

Fourneau was the son of a couple who own a hotel in Biarritz. He went to school in Bayonne and Bordeaux and then, from 1889 to 1892, trained as a pharmacist in Biarritz. After a year of military service, he attended the École supérieure de pharmacie in Paris from 1893 , but also attended lectures by Auguste Béhal , in which he already taught on the basis of atomic science. In 1895/96 he attended a course in microbiology at the Pasteur Institute , was in training at the Hospital Beaujon from 1895 and in 1897 was a student of Charles Moureu (1863-1929) in organic chemistry. In 1898 he obtained his diploma in pharmacology at the École supérieure de pharmacie and then studied in Germany from 1899 to 1902 with Theodor Curtius and Ludwig Gattermann in Heidelberg , Emil Fischer (whom Fourneau had already met when he was on vacation at his parents' hotel in Biarritz ), in Berlin and Richard Willstätter in Munich , who introduced him to the chemistry of alkaloids (specifically related to cocaine).

From 1900 to 1907 Fourneau ran a pharmacy in Paris with a former fellow student. At the same time he was from 1903 to 1911 head of research in the pharmaceutical company of the Poulenc brothers. During World War I he served as an officer in a pharmaceutical laboratory.

In 1911 he founded a laboratory for pharmaceutical chemistry at the Pasteur Institute at the invitation of Émile Roux , which he headed until 1944. From the beginning, Fourneau insisted on close collaboration between the laboratories at the Pasteur Institute and those of the Poulenc brothers' company. He promised Roux the publication of the research results (not common in the pharmaceutical industry at the time), but at the same time had himself assured of independence in research, for example in the development of drugs from the German pharmaceutical industry, which was leading then and up until the Second World War . These drugs were not patent-protected in France at the time. As practiced in the German pharmaceutical industry, he ensured close collaboration and exchange between chemists and medical professionals (both in research and in clinics). From 1917 he lectured in pharmacology in Madrid and from 1920 to 1921 he was a professor at the University of Madrid .

Since he was vice-president of the Franco-German committee from 1935 to 1939, which was headed on the German side by Otto Abetz (with whom Fourneau was friends), at that time campaigned for close Franco-German cooperation and also during the German occupation of France with the Germans worked together (for example, as head of an advisory committee on issues relating to the censorship of scientific publications), he was interned as a collaborator in 1944, but released under pressure from French and foreign scholars, including Frédéric Joliot-Curie . Fourneau also advocated scientific exchange with Soviet chemists in the 1920s and, for example, intervened in 1942 in favor of the republican chemist Enrique Moles, who was threatened with the death penalty by the Franco regime. Fourneau lost his previous positions in France after the war. From 1946 to 1949 he headed a laboratory set up especially for him at the Rhône-Poulenc company in Paris. He died at his residence in Ascain in the French Basque Country, where he bought a house in 1917.

He was married to Claudie Segond (daughter of surgeon Paul Segond ) since 1906 , with whom he had three sons. His son Jean-Claude Fourneau (1907–1981) was a painter.

In 1905 he received the Prix Gobley, 1910 the Prix Nativelle of the Académie de Médecine, 1913 the Prix Berthelot, 1919 and 1931 the Prix ​​Jecker , 1924 the Prix Parkin and 1941 the Prix Mounier.

From 1919 to 1933 he was General Secretary of the French Chemical Society. From 1919 he was a member of the Académie de Médecine. In 1932 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina .

plant

In 1903 he developed the first synthetic local anesthetic (amylocaine hydrochloride), which became established in medical practice - it was in use for over 40 years. He called it Stovaïne (Stovain) after its name in English (stove, stove). It was patented in 1903 and manufactured by the Poulenc brothers, for whom Fourneau founded a pharmaceutical laboratory in Ivry that same year . The Novocaine (procaine) by Alfred Einhorn (had hit the Fourneau in Germany) until today in dentistry in use, was patented until 1904 and 1906 by the surgeon Heinrich Braun clinically tested. Other previously developed synthetic local anesthetics (such as nirvanin by Einhorn, produced by Höchst from 1898, the poorly soluble benzocaine , or the eukain by Gustav Merling from 1897, produced by Schering in Berlin), which were used as a substitute for cocaine, which is burdened with side effects, in surgery should serve, had not prevailed in practice. Surgeon Paul Reclus conducted the clinical studies for stovain and demonstrated its benefits over cocaine.

At the Pasteur Institute, he turned to chemotherapeutic agents against infectious diseases, an area in which Germany still had a big lead at the time. After Paul Ehrlich had developed the Salvarsan against syphilis in Germany , Fourneau succeeded in 1921 in developing Stovarsol, an arsenic compound that was effective against syphilis and amoebic diseases. In 1924 he succeeded in clarifying the structure of 205 Bayer ( suramin ), a drug against sleeping sickness, the structure of which had been kept secret by the Bayer works. This resulted in the drug Moranyl at Rhône-Poulenc . Another breakthrough came in collaboration with Daniel Bovet, who worked for him at the Pasteur Institute, and Anne-Marie Staub in the development of the first antihistamines in 1933. Their active ingredient F 929 was toxic, however, and it was only Bernard Halpern who developed it from 1942 at Rhône-Poulenc first therapeutically applicable antihistamines. Fourneau and his group (the chemists Jacques and Thérèse Tréfouël , the pharmacologist Federico Nitti and Bovet) were also able to catch up with the first sulfonamides ( Prontosil ) developed by the German Gerhard Domagk (who received the Nobel Prize for it) in 1935 and the antibacterially active compound that Prontosil is converted into in the body ( sulfanilamide ). Her drug 1162 F was successfully used in hospitals in Paris against meningitis caused by streptococci. Although the sulfonamides were later overshadowed by penicillin and other antibiotics, representatives of the group are still used today as a diabetes therapeutic, for example.

literature

  • Marcel Delépine : Ernest Fourneau (1872–1949): Sa vie et son œuvre . Bulletin de la Société chimique de France, 1951.
  • Jean-Pierre Fourneau: Ernest Fourneau, fondateur de la chimie thérapeutique française: feuillets d'album , Revue d'histoire de la pharmacie, Volume 75, 1987, p. 335.
  • Jean-Pierre Fourneau: Ernest Fourneau (1872–1949) , Compte rendu de la séance publique hebdomadaire de l'Académie nationale de pharmacie, 1986.

Fonts

  • Ernest Fourneau: Remedies of organic chemistry and their production , Springer 1927

Web links

Commons : Ernest Fourneau  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John Lesch The making of the first miracle drugs - how the sulfa drugs transformed medicine , Oxford University Press 2007, p. 124
  2. ↑ biographical data, publications and Academic pedigree of Ernest Fourneau at academictree.org, accessed on February 6, 2018th
  3. ↑ Richard Willstätter, From my life. Of work. Musse and friends , Verlag Chemie, Weinheim / Bergstrasse, 1949 (pp. 91-94).
  4. ↑ John Lesch, loc. cit.
  5. ↑ On Stovain and the history of anesthetics in France: Christine Debue-Barazer Les implications scientifiques et industrielles du succès de la Stovaïne. Ernest Fourneau (1872-1949) et la chimie des médicaments en France , Gesnerus , volume 64, 2007; Marie-Thérèse cousin L'anesthésie réanimation en France. Des origines à 1965 , L'Harmattan, Coll. Sciences et société , 2005
  6. ^ E. Fourneau, D. Bovet, Recherches sur l'action sympathicolytique de nouveaux dérivés du dioxane , CR séances Soc. biolog., Volume 133, pp. 388-390, E. Fourneau, D. Bovet, Recherches sur l'action sympathicolytique d'un nouveau dérivé du dioxane , Arch. int. pharmacodynam. et thér., Vol. 46, 1933, pp. 178-191, A.-M. Staub, D. Bovet Action protectrice des éthers phenoliques au cours de l'intoxication histaminique , C. r. séances Soc. biol., Vol. 124, 1937, pp. 547-549, A.-M. Staub, D. Bovet, Action de la thymoxyéthyldiéthylamine (929 F) et des éthers phénoliques sur le choc anaphylactique du cobaye , C. r. séances Soc. biol., 1937, vol. 125, pp. 818-823. AT THE. Staub Recherches sur quelques bases synthétiques antagonistes de l'histamine , Ann. Inst. Pasteur, Vol. 63, 1939, pp. 400-436.
  7. ↑ J. and T. Tréfouël, F. Nitti and D. Bovet Activité du p-aminophénylsulfamide sur l'infection streptococcique expérimentale de la souris et du lapin , CR Soc. biol., vol. 120, 1935, p. 756.
personal data
SURNAME Fourneau, Ernest
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French chemist and pharmacologist
DATE OF BIRTH October 4, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Biarritz
DATE OF DEATH August 5, 1949
Place of death Ascain