Sidney Pestka

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Sidney Pestka (center) with George W. Bush at the award ceremony for the National Medal of Technology .

Sidney Pestka (born May 29, 1936 in Drobin , Poland ; † December 22, 2016 ) was a Polish -born American biochemist , known for developing interferons as a drug.

Live and act

Sidney Pestka came to the USA with his parents as a child and was already noticed as a teenager for his inventions (electronics and radio hobbyist, chemistry). He studied chemistry at Princeton University with a bachelor's degree summa cum laude in 1957 and then medicine at the School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania with an MD in 1961. He completed his internship at Baltimore City Hospital . From 1962 he worked at the National Heart Institute with the later Nobel Prize winner Marshall Nirenberg , where he was involved in his basic research on the effect of the genetic code (biological protein synthesis, function of the ribosomes). In 1966 he went to the National Cancer Institute , where he initially continued his basic research, but also began to be interested in interferon. From 1969 he was at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology of the pharmaceutical company Hoffmann-La Roche in Nutley ( New Jersey ), where he finally turned to interferon research and research on other cytokines. He was able to obtain a number of fundamental patents for Hoffmann-La Roche. He was also professor at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at Rutgers University from 1986 and was head of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology for 25 years (until 2011). In 1990 he founded PBL Assay Science with his wife, Joan Pestka, which provided interferons, immunoassays, growth factors and cytokines.

Pestka succeeded in developing a number of interferons that can be used in clinical applications, including the alpha interferon Roferon-A, which was produced by genetic engineering. It has been used clinically in cancer therapy ( e.g. melanoma ) and in hepatitis B and C. He also developed beta interferon for clinical use (treatment of multiple sclerosis ). For his research he developed, among other things, reversed-phase HPLC (another inventor is Csaba Horváth .

In 1977 he received the Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology, the National Medal of Technology and Innovation and the Seymour & Vivian Milstein Award in 2001, the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize at Harvard in 2003 and the Lemelson-MIT Prize in 2006 . In 1993 he was inducted into the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame . For his early research on the genetic code, he received the NIH Medal for Molecular Biology in 2009.

He received the National Medal of Technology for pioneering work that led to the development of the biotechnology industry, for the first recombinant interferons and for fundamental scientific discoveries in chemistry, biochemistry, genetic engineering and molecular biology (laudation).

Fonts (selection)

  • Pestka et al. a .: RNA Codewords and Protein Synthesis. V. Effect of Streptomycin on the Formation of Ribosome-sRNA Complexes , Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 53, 1965, pp. 639-646.
  • with N. Brot: Studies on the Formation of Transfer Ribonucleic Acid-Ribosome Complexes. XV. Effect of Antibiotics on Steps of Bacterial Protein Synthesis: Some New Ribosomal Inhibitors of Translocation, J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 246, 1971, pp. 7715-7722.
  • Pestka et al. a .: Cell-free Synthesis of Human Interferon, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 72, 1975, pp. 3898-3901.
  • with M. Rubinstein, S. Rubinstein, PC Familletti, RS Miller, AA Waldman: Human leukocyte interferon: production, purification to homogeneity, and initial characterization, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Volume 76, 1979, p. 640– 644.
  • with DV Goeddel: Human Leukocyte Interferon Produced by E. coli is Biologically Active, Nature 287, 1980, pp. 411-416. PMID 6159538
  • with S. Maeda u. a .: Construction and identification of bacterial plasmids containing nucleotide sequence for human leukocyte interferon , Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Volume 77, 1980, pp. 7010-7013

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Pioneering achievements that led to the development of the biotechnology industry, to the first recombinant interferons, and for basic scientific discoveries in chemistry, biochemistry, genetic engineering and molecular biology (laudation). PBL Assay Science