Hermann Blaschko

Hermann Blaschko , full name Hermann Felix Blaschko (born January 4, 1900 in Berlin , † April 18, 1993 in Oxford ) was a German-British biochemist and pharmacologist . As a Jew emigrated in 1933, most of his scientific work was done in England, where he mostly called himself Hugh Blaschko .

Life

Blaschko came from a Jewish family rich in important personalities. His father Alfred Blaschko was a dermatologist , venereologist and social politician in Berlin. The family was in contact with the dermatologist Albert Neisser , the founder of the journal Die Naturwissenschaften , Arnold Berliner and the physicist Max Born . Hermann studied medicine in Berlin and Freiburg im Breisgau . As a fellow student in Freiburg, he met Hans Adolf Krebs, who later won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (who later also worked in England), who gave his name to the Krebs cycle for the breakdown of acetyl-CoA . He completed his dissertation with the physiologist Johannes von Kries . After the state examination and doctorate, he went to the Medical Clinic of the University of Göttingen in 1923 , then in 1925 to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology in Berlin to the Nobel Prize winner for physiology or medicine in 1922 Otto Meyerhof , one of the namesake of the Embden-Meyerhof Way of glycolysis . In 1928 he moved to the Physiological Institute of the University of Jena and in 1929 he followed Meyerhof to the newly founded Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg . He regarded the years at Meyerhof as his most important apprenticeship. They were interrupted in 1926–1927 by an outbreak of his tuberculosis . In 1929 Meyerhof sent Blaschko to University College London for a year with Archibald Vivian Hill , with whom he had shared the Nobel Prize in 1922. The open and friendly atmosphere in the London institute was something new to Blaschko.

The National Socialist terror did not hit Hermann Blaschko directly. At the time of the seizure of power in 1933, he was again in hospital with tuberculosis, in Freiburg, where Hans Adolf Krebs was one of his doctors. There he received an invitation from AV Hill. In May 1933 he left Germany with the help of the British Academic Assistance Council . At first, while still convalescing, he worked in this organization, but in 1934 he accepted an invitation from the physiologist Joseph Barcroft to the University of Cambridge . As with Meyerhof, he first researched energy metabolism and internal breathing . He used " Warburg " pressure gauges that he had bought with his last money in Germany. One day Barcroft asked him: “How is adrenaline broken down in the body?” Blaschko did not know, and neither did literature. With his co-emigrant Hans Schlossmann, he decided to look for the answer experimentally. He had found the subject of his future research.

In the fall of 1943 Joshua Harold Burn (1892-1981) offered him a permanent position from the Pharmacological Institute at Oxford University . From 1944 he worked there, initially as a senior research officer , such as a senior assistant, and later until his retirement as a reader in Biochemical Pharmacology , such as a lecturer. His employees were numerous, including Jean Himms, later Professor of Biochemistry in Ottawa , Karen Helle, later Professor of Physiology in Bergen (Norway) , Hans Winkler, later Professor of Pharmacology in Innsbruck , David Smith, later Professor of Pharmacology in Oxford itself, Hans-Joachim Schümann , later Professor of Pharmacology in Essen , and Oleh Hornykiewicz , later Professor of Pharmacology in Vienna .

In 1944, the year he started in Oxford, Blaschko married Mary Black. She owned a house in Park Town, Oxford, where they lived from then on. Apart from his tuberculosis, Hermann remained healthy until the end of his life.

research

Blaschko's first major contribution to biology was - in answer to Barcroft's question - the discovery of an adrenaline-degrading enzyme, initially adrenaline oxidase, now called monoamine oxidase . He initially believed that the enzyme protected the body from toxic amines in food. But later it became clear that it also contributes to the breakdown of endogenous amines such as catecholamines and serotonin . Monoamine oxidase inhibitors are important antidepressants today .

The second major contribution was the clarification of the biosynthesis of catecholamines. She followed the path tyrosine → levodopa → dopamine and then probably → norepinephrine → adrenaline. The path was recognized at the same time by Peter Holtz in Rostock. The use of levodopa in Parkinson's disease and methyldopa in hypertension is based on the interference between the two substances in this synthesis pathway.

Other work was done on other amine oxidases. However, Blaschko's third major contribution is the proof that the catecholamines of the adrenal medulla are not dissolved in the cell sap but packed in vesicles , a precondition for their release by exocytosis . In addition to the catecholamines, the vesicles contain proteins and ATP. In general, hormones and neurotransmitters are stored vesicularly. That the proteins and ATP are released at the same time as the neurotransmitters and hormones is the most direct evidence of the exocytosis mechanism.

Together with the Mainz pharmacologist Erich Muscholl, Blaschko published the most thorough work of the 1970s on catecholamines.

Honors (selection)

Blaschko became a member of the Royal Society in 1962 . In 1963 he received the Purkinje Medal in Prague , and in 1972 in Mainz the Schmiedeberg plaque of the German Pharmacological Society. What he was most pleased about was the honorary doctorate from the Free University of Berlin in 1966 and the Aschoff lecture at the Medical Faculty of Freiburg in 1985.

Web links

• Literature by and about Hermann Blaschko in the catalog of the German National Library
• Obituary in the newspaper "Independent" for Blaschko, 1993

Individual evidence

1. ↑ HKF Blaschko: My path to pharmacology. In: Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology 1980; 20: 1-14
2. ↑ H.Blaschko, D. Richter and H. Castle Man: The inactivation of adrenaline . In: The Journal of Physiology 1937; 90: 1-17.
3. ^ Hermann Blaschko: The specific action of l-dopa decarboxylase . In: Journal of Physiology 1939; 96: 50P
4. ^ H. Blaschko and AD Welch: Localization of adrenaline in cytoplasmic particles of the bovine arenal medulla . In: Naunyn-Schmiedebergs Archive for Experimental Pathology and Pharmacology 1953; 219: 17-22
5. ↑ H. Blaschko and E. Muscholl (eds): Catecholamines. Handbook of experimental pharmacology Volume 33. Berlin, Springer-Verlag 1972
6. ^ GVR Born and P. Banks: Hugh Blaschko . In: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 1996; 42: 41-60