Sidney Udenfriend

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Sidney Udenfriend (born April 5, 1918 in New York City , † December 29, 1999 in Atlanta ) was an American biochemist , pharmacologist and one of the founding directors of the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology .

Life

Udenfriend was born in 1918 as the oldest of three children. The parents had immigrated to the United States from Europe five years earlier. After school, Udenfriend attended the City College of New York from 1935 . There Benjamin Harrow was his teacher, who influenced Udenfriend so much that he decided after graduating from college in 1939 to switch to the New York University Graduate School , where he studied with Kenneth Blanchard in the Department of Biology. In 1942 he graduated with a master’s degree and went as a biochemist to New York University's malaria program at Goldwater Memorial Hospital in New York. Here, under the direction of Bernard B. Brodie , he was primarily concerned with the development of new analysis methods for drugs and examined the metabolism of drugs.

In the fall of 1945 Udenfriend returned to the University of New York and began his doctorate in biochemistry at the University's Medical School under Severo Ochoa and later Albert Keston . Udenfriend received his doctorate in 1948 and then became a teacher at Washington University in St. Louis . The biochemistry at the University of St. Louis was headed by Nobel Prize winner Carl Ferdinand Cori . Together with Keston, Udenfried had developed a method for examining amino acids and their residues in proteins using isotope derivatives during his doctorate , which he has now developed further for enzyme analysis in St. Louis.

In 1950, Udenfried received an invitation to the National Institutes of Health from director James August Shannon . Against the advice of his boss Cori, Udenfriend accepted the offered position as a biochemist in the laboratory for chemical pharmacology at the National Heart Institute in Bethesda , Maryland . In the first few years, Udenfriend was particularly concerned with the aromatic hydroxylation of phenylalanine to tyrosine by means of hydroxylases , then tryptophan hydroylation, the biosynthesis of norephedrine and serotonin , proline hydroxylation and the synthesis of collagen . Udenfriend also examined the role of serotonin in carcinoid syndrome . Together with Albert Sjoerdsma's team, Udenfriend's research group developed a simple urine test to diagnose the syndrome, in which a high level of 5-hydroxyindolylacetic acid , a metabolite of serotonin, was detected in the urine. In the 1960s, Udenfriend conducted intensive research on phenylketonuria .

In 1967 Udenfriend met his former colleague John Burns, who was now Vice President of the research department at Hoffmann-La Roche , at a cocktail party . On this occasion, the idea of ​​a molecular biology research center at the pharmaceutical company was born. In just four months, Burns, Udenfriend and Herbert Weissbach developed the concept for the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology (RIMB). In July 1967, then Roche boss VD Mattia signed the founding agreement. Udenfriend hesitated only briefly when asked if he would like to become head of basic research at the RIMB and recruited several young scientists from the NIH. The new institute started in 1968 with temporary laboratories at the Roche site in Nutley and moved to new premises in 1971. In the same year Udenfriend became a member of the National Academy of Sciences . In 1974 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

At the RIMB, too, Udenfreind was primarily concerned with hydroxylation - in particular of proline, tyrosine and dopamine . He also worked intensively on fluorescamine detection tests for amino acids , peptides and proteins . In addition, he and his team conducted intensive research into alpha interferon and its isolation and biotechnological production. Udenfriend remained director of the RIMB until 1983, when he resigned from his position at the age of 65, but remained at the institute as a scientist. In 1994 Hoffmann-La Roche decided to close the institute and implemented the decision in 1995.

In the same year Udenfriend was seriously injured in a self-inflicted accident and was in a coma for several days. He was only released after several months of hospitalization and rehabilitation. After his recovery, he went in December 1996 as director of the "Charles A. Dana Research Institute for Scientists Emeriti" (RISE) at Drew University . Udenfriend stayed there until 1999, but the consequences of the accident and increasing age troubled him and his wife and the couple decided to move to their daughter in Atlanta.

Shortly after moving to Udenfriend had because of a coronary heart disease a bypass surgery undergo. In the recovery phase after the operation, however, he suffered a severe stroke and fell into a coma . He died in Atlanta on December 29, 1999.

Awards and honors

  • 1967: Van Slyke Award
  • 1967: Gairdner Foundation International Award
  • 1969: Ames Award from the American Association of Clinical Chemistry
  • Since 2000, Drew University has awarded the Sidney Udenfriend Prize annually for student research.

Publications (selection)

Udenfriend has published more than 500 books and articles on his research topics, including some volumes of a standard work on peptides:

  • with Albert Sjoerdsma, Luther L. Terry: Malignant carcinoid: a new metabolic disorder . National Heart Institute, Bethesda, 1956
  • with Herbert Weissbach, Donald F. Bogdanski: Biochemical findings relating to the action of serotonin . 1957
  • Fluorescence Assay in Biology and Medicine . Volume 1, Academic Press, Orlando, 1962
  • Fluorescence Assay in Biology and Medicine . Volume 2, Academic Press, New York, London, 1969
  • with Sydney Spector; Marion deV Cotten: Regulation of catecholamine metabolism in the nervous system . Williams & Wilkinson, Baltimore, 1972
  • with Erhard Gross, Johannes Meienhofer, Clark W. Smith, Victor J Hruby: Major methods of peptide bond formation . (= The Peptides. Analysis, Synthesis, Biology , Volume 1), Academic Press, 1979
  • with Erhard Gross, Johannes Meienhofer, Clark W. Smith, Victor J Hruby: Protection of functional groups in peptide synthesis . (= The Peptides. Analysis, Synthesis, Biology , Volume 3), Academic Press, 1981
  • with Erhard Gross, Johannes Meienhofer, Clark W. Smith, Victor J Hruby: Modern techniques of conformational structural and configurational analysis . (= The Peptides. Analysis, Synthesis, Biology , Volume 4), Academic Press, 1981
  • with Johannes Meienhofer: Opioid peptides: biology, chemistry, and genetics . (= The Peptides. Analysis, Synthesis, Biology , Volume 6), Academic Press, Orlando, London, 1984
  • with Johannes Meienhofer: The Peptides: Analysis, Synthesis, Biology: Conformation in Biology and Drug Design . (= The Peptides. Analysis, Synthesis, Biology , Volume 7), Academic Press, 1985
  • Chemistry, Biology, and Medicine of Neurohypophyseal Hormones and their Analogs: The Peptides Analysis, Synthesis, Biology . (= The Peptides. Analysis, Synthesis, Biology , Volume 8), Academic Press, 1987

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Short biography of Udenfriends at the American Association of Clinical Chemistry
  2. ↑ Presentation of the Gairdner Award to Udenfriend , Gairdner Foundation (gairdner.org), accessed on April 15, 2014 (English)
  3. ↑ Presentation of the Ames Award to Udenfriend , American Association for Clinical Chemistry, accessed on April 15, 2014 (English)
personal data
SURNAME Udenfriend, Sidney
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American biochemist and pharmacologist
DATE OF BIRTH April 5, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH December 29, 1999
Place of death Atlanta