Isaac Djerassi
Isaac Djerassi (* 1925 in Sofia ; † November 12, 2011 in Philadelphia ) was an Israeli-American physician ( oncology , hematologist , pediatrics ).
Djerassi was threatened with deportation to National Socialist extermination camps in Bulgaria and he was already in a temporary camp for Jews, but the Bulgarian government refused to allow the deportation and he was able to start studying medicine in 1944. He emigrated there immediately after Israel gained independence. He studied medicine at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (graduated in 1951, the university’s first medical school graduation) and then went to Sidney Farber at Harvard University and Boston Children's Hospital in 1954 . In the early 1960s he was head of the blood bank at the Children's Hospital in Philadelphia. In the late 1960s he propagated small cancer centers and treated himself (this time adult patients) at such a center he founded at the Mercy Catholic Medical Center in Misericordia. In 2001 he withdrew from active treatment.
In the 1950s, together with Farber and Edmund Klein , he developed a separation process for blood reserves that made it possible to transplant blood components such as platelets and white blood cells separately, for example in the treatment of leukemia.
In 1960 he developed a method at the Children's Hospital in Philadelphia to make the aggressive chemotherapeutic agent methotrexate less toxic for children by adding Leucovorin (so-called Leucovorin Rescue).
In the 1960s he achieved successes in remission in leukemia in children that lasted longer (1966).
He was also involved in the development of therapies for hemophilia in children (frozen factor 8 preparations) and was a pioneer in this (with Pattiporn Banchet he developed a method from Judith Pool further).
In 1972 he received the Lasker ~ DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award . In 1977 he received an honorary doctorate from Villanova University.
He is co-founder of the Djerassi-Elias Institute for Cancer Research at Tel Aviv University.
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Djerassi, Isaac |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American medic |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1925 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Sofia |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 12, 2011 |
| Place of death | Philadelphia |