Hartmann Staehelin

Grave in the Hörnli cemetery , Riehen, Basel-Stadt

Hartmann F. Stähelin (born October 20, 1925 in Walenstadtberg ; † July 5, 2011 in Basel ) was a Swiss pharmacologist and microbiologist who is considered one of the discoverers of ciclosporin .

Life

Stähelin, the son of two doctors, went to the humanistic grammar school in Basel and studied medicine at the University of Basel , in Zurich and Florence from 1944 to 1950 . From 1951 to 1954 he conducted research at the Institute for Microbiology (then a hygienic institute ) at the University of Basel. There he succeeded in producing naked protoplasts (from anthrax pathogens) and their fusion for the first time in 1951 . He then conducted research at Harvard Medical School in 1955 with Emanuel Suter , John Franklin Enders (where he familiarized himself with the latest laboratory techniques on behalf of his future employer Sandoz) and Manfred L. Karnovsky (on phagocytosis ). There he succeeded in rediscovering the oxidative burst of leukocytes (previously discovered in 1933 by CW Baldridge, RW Gerard). The research influenced the later work of Karnovsky and Sbarra (1959) on the biochemical processes involved in phagocytosis. In 1955 Stähelin became laboratory manager and later head of pharmacology research at Sandoz in Basel . In 1963 he was an authorized signatory and in 1967 he was vice director. In the 1980s he was responsible for coordinating preclinical research at Sandoz / Novartis. He was also secretary of the Sandoz Foundation for Research in Medicine and Biology. In 1990 he retired from Sandoz.

Stähelin had been married since 1957 and had four children. He died on July 5, 2011 as a result of a fall.

plant

Stähelin played a key role in the discovery of ciclosporin at Sandoz in the early 1970s, in particular through the inclusion of an immunosuppression test in the screening procedures for potential drugs that were carried out at Sandoz, for example, on soil and fungus samples, employees from all over the world brought with. This led to the development of the most important drug for suppressing immune rejection in organ transplants, which at Novartis (as Sandoz was later called) generated billions in sales every year.

While Jean-François Borel was long considered the main discoverer of ciclosporin, a heated dispute broke out about it later and the contributions of his then superior Stähelin and other scientists were also honored. A report commissioned by Novartis (from CEO Daniel Vasella) by former research directors Karl Heusler (from Ciba-Geigy) and Alfred Pletscher (Roche) came to the conclusion in 2003 that Stähelin was at least as involved in the discovery as Borel.

Stähelin also played an important role in the development of the anti-cancer drug etoposide (discovered as an active ingredient in foot leaves ) and other cytostatic drugs (such as cytochalasin B, verrucarin, anguidin).

Honors

In 2003 Stähelin received the Pascoe Prize. He also received the Bristol Price for Anticancer Therapy from the American Society for Cancer and Chemotherapy (1985), the Bruce Cain Memorial Award (1990) from the American Association for Cancer Research, and the Swiss Cancer League (1991). In 1977/78 he was President of the Natural Research Society Basel and from 1981 to 1998 he was on the Citizens' Council of Basel. He is co-founder and was President of the Association for the Promotion of the Bernoulli Edition.

Web links

• Biography ( Memento from October 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ "Sandimmune" creator Hartmann Stähelin died. In: OnlineReports . July 13, 2011, accessed July 14, 2011.
2. ↑ On the Sandimmun dispute and the appointment of a commission at Novartis . A book by Stephan Bosch was published about this: The Sandimmun Files. A pharmaceutical scandal , Rüffer and Rub 2009. Review by Deutschlandradio Kultur