Raphael Mechoulam

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Raphael Mechoulam

Raphael Mechoulam ( Hebrew רפאל משולם; * November 5, 1930 in Sofia ) is an award-winning Israeli professor of pharmaceutical chemistry and natural products at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . He is considered the grandfather of research into medical cannabis and convinced Israeli politicians of its benefits. He researched the plant for decades and discovered the endocannabinoid system of the nervous system.

Life

Raphael Mechoulam was born in 1930 to a Sephardic family in Sofia, Bulgaria, where his father was the head of the Jewish hospital. After the family had to flee from the Nazis, the father became a family doctor in small villages. He emigrated to Israel with his family from Bulgaria in 1949. After his emigration, Mechoulam had to wait a year before he could start studying chemistry because the Arab Legion initially controlled the area in which the laboratories of the Hebrew University were located. During his military service he devoted himself to researching insecticides. Mechoulam studied biochemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, received his doctorate in 1958 under Franz Sondheimer at the Weizmann Institute of Science and subsequently received a postdoctoral position at the Rockefeller Institute (now Rockefeller University ) in New York. In 1960 he began his research on the natural products of the cannabis plant at the Weizmann Institute and continued it in 1966 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem .

As early as 1963, he isolated cannabidiol (CBD) from around 1,000 substances , a molecule that triggers a therapeutic effect - and is hardly psychoactive. It is one of the most medically important components of cannabis. A year later he also isolated the substance that changes consciousness - tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).

The Czech chemist Lumír Ondřej Hanuš and the American molecular pharmacologist William Anthony Devane.

Thirty years later, Mechoulam also found the receptors to which cannabis docks in the brain: in 1992, together with his colleagues, he isolated and identified the endocannabinoid anandamide , together with Lumír Hanuš and William Devane and in 1995, together with 2-arachidonylglycerol (2-AG) with Shimon Ben-Shabat. Together with the specific receptors, these form the endocannabinoid system - an important biochemical endogenous system that is located in the brain and is involved in a large number of physiological functions. Mechoulam has proven in scientific studies the effectiveness of cannabis in numerous diseases. He made sure that Israeli companies are involved in more than 80 percent of all cannabis patents worldwide .

Mechoulam received the Israel Prize for Chemistry in 2000 and is internationally known for his research on natural and endogenous cannabinoids. He and his working group were the first to synthesize tetrahydrocannabinol , cannabidiol and cannabigerol and identify the endocannabinoids anandamide and 2-AG . He has published more than 350 scientific articles to date and is an elected member of the Israel Academy of Sciences .

Works

Essays
  • R. Michoulam, Y. Shvo: Hashish. I. The structure of cannabidiol. In: Tetrahedron. Volume 19, Number 12, December 1963, pp. 2073-2078, PMID 5879214 .
  • Y. Gaoni, R. Mechoulam: Isolation, Structure, and Partial Synthesis of an Active Constituent of Hashish. In: Journal of the American Chemical Society. 86, 1964, pp. 1646-1647, doi: 10.1021 / ja01062a046 .
  • Yechiel Gaoni, Raphael Mechoulam: Isolation and structure of .DELTA. + - tetrahydrocannabinol and other neutral cannabinoids from hashish. In: Journal of the American Chemical Society. 93, 1971, pp. 217-224, doi: 10.1021 / ja00730a036 .
Monographs
  • Marijuana, Chemistry, Pharmacology, Metabolism and Clinical Effects . Academic Press, New York, 1973.
  • Cannabinoids as Therapeutic Agents . CRC Press, FL. 1986.
  • Trends in Medicinal Chemistry . S. Sarel, R. Mechoulam, I. Agranat (eds). Blackwell Publ. Oxford, 1991.
  • Cannabinoids as Therapeutics . Birkhauser, Basel, 2005.

Web links

Movies

  • The one-hour biographical documentary film The Scientist on YouTube by Zach Klein on the life's work of Prof. Raphael Mechoulam, 2015, Canna Foundation

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities: Professor Raphael Mechoulam (PDF; 70 kB)
  2. ↑ biographical data, publications and Academic pedigree of Raphael Mechoulam at academictree.org, accessed on 2 January of 2019.
  3. ^ Conversation with Raphael Mechoulam . In: Wiley (Ed.): Addiction . 102, No. 6, 2007, pp. 887-893. doi : 10.1111 / j.1360-0443.2007.01795.x . PMID 17523982 .
  4. ↑ Michael Denman: Mechoulam, Raphael. In: Encyclopaedia Judaica 13, 2007, pp. 711-712.
  5. ↑ Raphael Mechoulam: Curriculum Vitae , Hebrew University of Jerusalem, accessed September 25, 2016
  6. ↑ L'expert en herbe de Jérusalem , Liberation, January 21, 2014
  7. ↑ Devane WA, Hanus L, Breuer A, et al : Isolation and structure of a brain constituent that binds to the cannabinoid receptor . In: Science . 258, No. 5090, 1992, pp. 1946-9. PMID 1470919 .
  8. ^ R. Mechoulam, S. Ben-Shabat, L. Hanus et al : Identification of an endogenous 2-monoglyceride, present in canine gut, that binds to cannabinoid receptors . In: Biochem. Pharmacol. . 50, No. 1, 1995, pp. 83-90. PMID 7605349 .
  9. ↑ Getting high and healthy in the Holy Landl , Die Welt, September 23, 2016
  10. ^ R. Mechoulam: Conversation with Raphael Mechoulam . In: Addiction (Abingdon, England) . 102, No. 6, June 2007, pp. 887-93. doi : 10.1111 / j.1360-0443.2007.01795.x . PMID 17523982 .
personal data
SURNAME Mechoulam, Raphael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES רפאל משולם (Hebrew)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli chemist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH 5th November 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Sofia