Eugene Goldwasser

Eugene Goldwasser (born October 14, 1922 in Brooklyn , New York , † December 17, 2010 in Chicago , Illinois ) was an American biochemist who was instrumental in the discovery, isolation and structural analysis of the hormone erythropoietin .

Short biography

Eugene Goldwasser grew up in modest circumstances. His father had to close his small tailor shop in Brooklyn in the wake of the Great Depression of 1929 and was then initially unemployed. Due to a lack of financial resources, Goldwasser's older brother was also forced to drop out of New York University . The family eventually moved to Kansas City , where father and brother found new jobs in an uncle's business.

As a high school student, reading the novels awakened Dr. med Arrowshmith (1925) from Sinclair Lewis and Microbe Hunters (1926) from Paul de Kruif his passion for science. He began his university career at the Kansas City Community College before he received a scholarship from the University of Chicago in 1941 , to which he remained as a professor of biochemistry until his retirement in 2002.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor and the USA's entry into World War II , Eugene Goldwasser got a permanent position at the University's Institute of Toxicology, where he worked on the research and development of antidotes against chemical warfare agents. In 1944 Goldwasser was appointed to the army. By the end of the war with Japan he was bioweapons - lab of Fort Detrick , Maryland stationed on the anthrax involved -Research. After the war, Goldwasser went back to Chicago and completed his PhD in biochemistry there. In 1952, now married and father of one son, he became a scientific assessor at the Argonne Cancer Research Hospital, which later became part of the University Hospitals in Chicago. There he met Leon Orris Jacobson , with whom he had a close academic and friendly relationship until his death in 1992. From 1954, both scientists worked almost exclusively on researching the humoral factor whose existence was predicted at the beginning of the century and which was given the name `` erythropoietin '' (EPO for short) around 40 years later. In 1957 Goldwasser and Jacobson were able to prove that EPO is formed in the kidney . Around 20 years later, they finally succeeded in isolating the hormone: they needed 2,250 liters of urine from patients with aplastic anemia to produce 8 milligrams of human EPO .

Appreciation

Erythropoietin is now one of the most important biopharmaceuticals worldwide if the sales figures and the range of possible medical indications are used as a basis for the evaluation. Without the work of Goldwasser and his employees, the economic use and medical application of the hormone would be unthinkable. Eugene Goldwasser's achievements in the history of medicine in the 20th century are comparable to those of Frederick Banting or Alexander Fleming , without ever having achieved their fame beyond the professional world.

In 1991 Goldwasser was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1996 he received the Karl Landsteiner Memorial Award .

literature

• Goozner M. (2004), The $ 800 Million Pill: The Truth behind the Cost of New Drugs , University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-90173-8 .
• Goldwasser E. et al. (1990) Erythropoietin. , Immunol Ser. 49: 257-276.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dr. Eugene Goldwasser, 1922-2010 , Chicago Tribune, December 21, 2010 (accessed September 5, 2012).
2. ^ "Eugene Goldwasser, Biochemist Behind an Anemia Drug, Dies at 88" , New York Times, December 20, 2010 (accessed December 21, 2010).