Georg Hertting

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Georg Hertting (born November 8, 1925 in Prague ; † July 21, 2014 in Vienna ) was an Austrian doctor and pharmacologist and co-discoverer of the reuptake of neurotransmitters as a functional principle of nerve cells . From 1973 to 1994 he held the chair for pharmacology and toxicology at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg .

From left Georg Hertting, Hans Klupp, Oleh Hornykiewicz and Walter Kobinger 1985

Life

The father, of the same name, managed the branches of the Swedish company Sandvik in Prague and later in Vienna. The mother was Hermine Hertting geb. Kneschk. The son's Abitur in 1943 in Prague was followed by military service and Soviet imprisonment. After the Second World War , the family moved to Vienna. Hertting began studying medicine there in 1947, and it was there that he was promoted to Dr. med. PhD. From 1953 he worked alongside Hans Klupp (* 1919), later pharmacologist at Böhringer Ingelheim , Oleh Hornykiewicz (* 1926), the discoverer of dopamine deficiency in Parkinson's disease , and Walter Kobinger (* 1927), one of the first to describe clonidine , at the Vienna Pharmacological Institute, then headed by Franz Theodor von Brücke .

He spent the years 1959 to 1961 at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda (Maryland) with Julius Axelrod . Back in Vienna, he completed his habilitation in 1965. Around the same time, between 1964 and 1966, his above-mentioned co-assistants completed their habilitation. After von Brückes death, he was acting head of the Vienna Institute from 1970 to 1972. In 1973 he moved to the Pharmacological Institute of the University of Freiburg as a professor . He turned down a call to Innsbruck in 1977. After his retirement in 1994, he returned to Vienna from Freiburg, where he last lived on Burgunder Strasse. Klaus Aktories was his successor in Freiburg .

research

In 1961, Julius Axelrod's group, including Hertting, solved the riddle of how some neurotransmitters, once released from presynaptic axon endings by nerve activity , are removed from the extracellular space again: namely, by being taken up again in the axon endings by means of membrane transport . The puzzle was solved with the help of radioactively labeled transmitters. The first was 3 H norepinephrine , and the nerve cells were those of the postganglionic sympathetic nervous system . 3 H-noradrenaline not only entered the sympathetic nerve cells after contact with the tissue, but could also be released again afterwards through renewed nerve stimulation. The resumption could be inhibited by some important drugs, such as cocaine and many antidepressants , the mechanism of which was (partially) clear. For this research, Julius Axelrod received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1970 together with Bernard Katz and Ulf von Euler . Hertting's involvement was significant. The Medical Faculty Freiburg wrote in 1972: “In two years there were almost 20 publications with the name 'Hertting' - 13 works with his name in the first place.” Axelrod himself wrote in 2003 (from English): “The experimentum crucis for the Evidence of the uptake of norepinephrine in sympathetic nerve cells was suggested by Georg Hertting, an Austrian guest scientist in my laboratory. ”In Vienna, Hertting clarified the influence of blood flow on norepinephrine movements in synapses in a small but influential study. His habilitation thesis showed that the body treats isoprenaline , a prototype of bronchospasmolytics , differently despite its chemical relationship to noradrenaline.

In Freiburg he turned to other topics. He and his colleagues, especially Dieter Meyer (* 1944), recognized that the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system is involved in the sensation of thirst .

With Bernhard Peskar (* 1941) he investigated the role of prostaglandins in the brain. During epileptic convulsions, their concentration increased. They suppressed convulsions themselves, while suppression of their biosynthesis promoted convulsions. This identified them as the body's own anti-epileptic factors.

While Hertting's research in Bethesda and Vienna focused on an event at the end of synaptic information transfer, the inactivation of the transmitter, since the late 1960s in Freiburg he has been increasingly concerned with an event at the beginning of information transfer, namely the modulation of transmitter release by presynaptic receptors , and here especially with the mechanisms of presynaptic modulation . Employees were Rolf Jackisch (* 1942), Thomas Feuerstein (* 1951) and Clemens Allgaier (* 1956). The group found that many inhibitory presynaptic receptors couple to heteromeric G proteins of the G i / o family and then either slow down the entry of calcium ions through presynaptic calcium channels or a subsequent step in exocytosis .

Other Freiburg students of Hertting were Willhart Knepel (* 1951), Ulrich Förstermann (* 1955) and Peter Gebicke-Härter (* 1947). Bernhard Peskar took over the pharmacology chair at the Ruhr University in Bochum in 1981 and the chair in Graz in 1994. Ulrich Förstermann took over the pharmacology chair at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in 1993 .

Honors

Hertting is a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and has been an honorary member of the Austrian Pharmacological Society since 2002.

On the occasion of Hertting's retirement, the dean of the Freiburg Medical Faculty said: “When you come to a new faculty ... you immediately notice this or that. For example, I immediately noticed that there are personalities in the Freiburg Medical Faculty who not only have independent opinions, but also express them. You, dear colleague Hertting, are a master at this art, and for that we are all - almost all - grateful. It is therefore difficult for us to say goodbye to the teaching staff: We will miss you and your humor - which was sometimes cheerful, sometimes black and bitter angry, but always clever. "Hertting's colleague Klaus Starke , holder of a second pharmacology chair in Freiburg, established in 1979, wrote on the same occasion: "In the Magic Mountain , Settembrini once said, looking melancholy into the air: 'Somebody must have a spirit.' Georg Hertting has a spirit. "

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Part of Georg Hertting
  2. ^ Message from the family to user: Coranton .
  3. ↑ a b c d Klaus Starke: The history of the pharmacological institute of the University of Freiburg. Heidelberg, Springer-Verlag 2004. 2nd edition 2007 as PDF
  4. ↑ Georg Hertting, Julius Axelrod, L. Gordon Whitby: Effect of drugs on the uptake and metabolism of 3 H-norepinephrine . In: Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics . 134, 1961, pp. 146-153. PMID 14042299 .
  5. ↑ G. Hertting, J. Axelrod: Fate of tritiated noradrenaline at the sympathetic nerve endings . In: Nature (London) . 192, 1961, pp. 172-173. doi : 10.1038 / 192172a0 . PMID 13906919 .
  6. ↑ Julius Axelrod, LG Whitby, Georg Hertting: Effect of psychotropic drugs on the uptake of H 3 -norepinephrine by tissues . In: Science . 133, 1961, pp. 383-384. doi : 10.1126 / science.133.3450.383 . PMID 13685337 .
  7. ↑ Julius Axelrod: Journey of a late blooming biochemical neuroscientist . In: The Journal of Biological Chemistry . 278, 2003, pp. 1-13. doi : 10.1074 / jbc.X200004200 . PMID 12414788 .
  8. ↑ G. Hertting, Th. Schiefthaler: Relationship between flow size and noradrenaline release in the case of nerve irritation of the isolated perfused cat spleen . In: Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archive for experimental pathology and pharmacology . 246, 1963, pp. 13-14. doi : 10.1007 / BF00261063 .
  9. ↑ Klaus Starke: There can be a trace of our earth floors - on pharmacologists and pharmacology . In: Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology . 380, 2009, pp. 465-471, here pp. 467-468. doi : 10.1007 / s00210-009-0443-7 . PMID 19760274 .
  10. ↑ G. Hertting: The fate of 3 H- iso- proterenol in the rat . In: Biochemical Pharmacology . 13, 1964, pp. 1119-1128. doi : 10.1016 / 0006-2952 (64) 90112-1 . PMID 14222508 .
  11. ^ DK Meyer and G. Hertting: Drinking induced by direct or indirect stimulation of beta-receptors: evidence for involvement of the renin-angiotensin system. In G. Peters and others (eds.): Control Mechanisms of Drinking. Berlin, Springer-Verlag 1975, pages 89-95
  12. ^ Georg Hertting, András Seregi: Formation and function of eicosanoids in the central nervous system . In: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences . 559, 1989, pp. 84-99. doi : 10.1111 / j.1749-6632.1989.tb22600.x . PMID 2672946 .
  13. ↑ Clemens Allgaier, Thomas J. Feuerstein, Rolf Jackisch, Georg Hertting: Islet-activating protein (pertussis toxin) diminishes α 2 -adrenoceptor mediated effects on noradrenaline release . In: Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology . 331, 1985, pp. 235-239. doi : 10.1007 / BF00634243 . PMID 3003591 .
personal data
SURNAME Hertting, Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian doctor and pharmacologist
DATE OF BIRTH November 8, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH July 21, 2014
Place of death Vienna