Sidney Farber

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Sidney Farber around 1960
Dana Farber building in the Longwood Medical Area : Dana Farber building on the left and the Smith building on the right

Sidney Farber (born September 30, 1903 in Buffalo , † March 30, 1973 in Boston ) was an American pathologist .

Life

Farber studied medicine at the Universities of Buffalo , Heidelberg and Freiburg and at Harvard University . He received his MD in Boston . In 1928 he got an assistant position in pathology at Harvard Medical School . Farber was the first to discover the cytostatic effect of aminopterin (a folic acid derivative) on tumor cells . This ultimately led to the development of methotrexate , an important and common cytostatic agent to this day. He continued working on new chemotherapeutic agents until the end of his life.

In 1947 he became a professor of pathology. In 1948 he founded the Children's Cancer Research Foundation in Boston . Until his retirement in 1970 he was its director. In 1974, one year after Farber's death, it was renamed the Sidney Farber Cancer Institute in his honor and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in 1983 . Farber is considered to be the founder of modern child pathology.

Farber was known that folic acid promoted normal blood formation in some anemia and wanted to test it in leukemia in 1947, but found that it got worse, so that on the contrary, a diet low in folic acid had a soothing effect. Farber then looked for folic acid antagonists . The first synthesized by the Indian biochemist Yellapragada Subbarow (1895-1948), who was at Lederle Laboratories in New York. Subbarow was looking for folic acid analogues for anemia patients, so he produced folic acid-like substances, one of which (aminopterin) worked so similar that it could be used as an inhibitor. Farber achieved resounding success in children with leukemia (10 of 16 showed intermittent remissions). With Subbarow he later developed methotrexate, a folic acid antagonist that was also successful in therapy for other types of cancer (it blocked the enzyme dihydrofolate reductase, which was important in DNA synthesis).

Farber's syndrome , which he first described, is named after Farber .

Sidney Farber was married to Norma C. Farber (née Holzman) since 1928. His wife was a children's book author. His brother Marvin Farber (1901–1980) was a philosopher and professor at the University at Buffalo.

Awards

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lowe, Das Chemiebuch, Librero 2017, p. 344
  2. ↑ S. Farber: A lipid metabolic disorder: disseminated lipogranulomatosis; a syndrome with similarity to, and important difference from, Niemann-Pick and Hand-Schüller-Christian disease. In: American Journal of Diseases of Children 84, 1952, pp. 499-500. PMID 12975849
  3. ↑ S. Farber et al.: Lipogranulomatosis: a new lipo-glyco-protein 'storage' disease. In: J. Mt. Sinai Hosp. 24, 1957, pp. 816-837.

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Farber, Sidney
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American pathologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 30, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Buffalo
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 1973
Place of death Boston