Leo Sachs

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Leo Sachs (1955)

Leo Sachs ( Hebrew ליאו זקס; * October 14, 1924 in Leipzig ; † December 12, 2013 ) was a German-born Israeli molecular biologist, immunologist and cancer researcher.

Life

As a Jew, Sachs went to England with his family in 1933 after the Nazis came to power in Germany. In 1952 he emigrated to Israel, initially with the aim of working in agriculture in a kibbutz . He was a professor at the Weizmann Institute , where he had been since 1952 and founded the genetics department. There he was Otto Meyerhof Professor of Molecular Biology.

In the 1950s he showed how genetic examinations of cells from human amniotic fluid could be used to obtain indications of the disposition to disease and, for example, the sex of the embryos, which later became the basis for prenatal diagnosis.

Sachs then researched in particular the development and differentiation of blood cells in normal development and in cancer cells, for which he first developed methods for studying in vitro. He discovered the role of various Colony Stimulating Factors (CSF) (and some interleukins ) in the development and differentiation of white blood cells ( monocytes , neutrophils ). He also examined the development of leukemia cells in vitro and discovered that the development of cancer can also be reversed by some of the messenger substances, resulting in a new form of therapy, differentiation therapy.

In 1959 he and Ernest Winocour showed, independently of Renato Dulbecco and Margarete Vogt, the transformation of benign cells into cancer cells when the polyomavirus was injected into the mouse. He also studied the influence of chemicals and X-rays on the development of cancer in vitro.

In 1980 he received the Wolf Prize for Medicine. In 1972 he received the Israel Prize and in 1977 the Rothschild Prize . In 1975 he was admitted to the Israel Academy of Sciences . He was an external member of the National Academy of Sciences (1995), a member of the Academia Europaea and a Fellow of the Royal Society (1997), whose Wellcome Foundation Prize he received in 1986. He received the EMET Prize in 2002, the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize from Harvard Medical School in 1996, the Bristol-Myers Award in 1983 for achievements in cancer research, and the Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. Prize from the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation in 1989 . He was an honorary doctor from the Universities of Bordeaux and Lund.

Sachs died at the age of 89 on December 12, 2013.

literature

  • Sachs: The adventures of a biologist: Prenatal diagnosis, hematopoiesis, leukemia, carcinogenesis and tumor suppression , Foundations in Cancer Research. Adv. Cancer Res., Vol. 66, 1995, pp. 1-40.
  • Sachs: The control of growth and differentiation in normal and leukemic blood cells , Cancer, Volume 65, May 1990, pp. 2196-2206.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sachs, David Serr, Mathilde Danon Prenatal diagnosis of sex using cells from the amniotic fluid , Science, Volume 123, 1956, p. 548
  2. ↑ To be more precise, granulocyte CSF, g-CSF. Ichikawa, Putznik, Sachs In vitro control of the development of macrophage and granulocyte colonies , Proc. Nat. Acad., Vol. 56, 1966, pp. 488-495, independently Bradley and Metcalfe in Melbourne, Australia, Aust. J. Exp. Biol. Med. Sci., Vol. 44, 1966, p. 287
  3. ↑ Sachs, Winocour Tumor Induction by Genetically Homogeneous Lines of Polyoma Virus , J. Nat. Cancer Inst., Vol. 26, 1961, pp. 737-753
  4. ↑ Prof. Leo Sachs, one of Israel's first geneticists, dies at 89. In: Haaretz from December 15, 2013 (accessed December 18, 2013).
personal data
SURNAME Sachs, Leo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli molecular biologist
DATE OF BIRTH October 14, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH December 12th 2013