Siegfried Walter Loewe

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Siegfried Walter Loewe

Siegfried Walter Loewe (born August 19, 1884 in Fürth , † August 24, 1963 in Salt Lake City , Utah ) was a German pharmacologist , endocrinologist and clinical chemist . His research on sex hormones became most important in the 1920s and after 1937 on cannabis active ingredients.

Life

He was the son of the banker August Loewe and his wife Clotilde nee. Blumenthal. He attended the humanistic Lessing-Gymnasium (Frankfurt) in Frankfurt am Main and then studied medicine in Freiburg im Breisgau, Berlin, Strasbourg and Munich, where he passed the state examination in 1907. From 1905 to 1910 he worked with Franz Hofmeister at the Physiological-Chemical Institute of the University of Strasbourg , where he obtained a doctorate in 1908 with a dissertation on the course of peptic digestion of casein and serum globulin . received his doctorate. From 1910 to 1912 he headed the chemical laboratory of the Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Leipzig and at the same time worked at the physical-chemical institute, where he was influenced by the colloid chemist Herbert Freundlich . In 1912 he became an assistant to Wolfgang Heubner at the Pharmacological Institute of the Georg-August University in Göttingen . Here he completed his habilitation in 1913 with a thesis on membrane and anesthesia , in which he deepened the lipoid theory of anesthesia . In 1919 he married Ida geb. Witte, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. From 1921 to 1928 he was full professor of pharmacology at the National Estonian University of Tartu in Estonia. In 1924 he set a monument to his institute there, which Rudolf Buchheim had founded in an essay "From the cradle of pharmacology". His research on sex hormones began in Tartu . He continued it when, in 1928, he succeeded Ernst Josef Lesser as head of the main laboratory of the Mannheim Municipal Hospitals and soon after became honorary professor at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg . Discharged as a Jew in 1933, he emigrated via Switzerland and Turkey to the USA, where, thanks to the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, he was at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, the Montefiori Hospital, Bronx , New York and the Pharmacological Institute of Cornell University and was able to take up his second big topic, the active ingredients of cannabis. In 1946 he was appointed Research Professor of Pharmacology at the Pharmacological Institute of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City , which was headed by Louis S. Goodman , where he died shortly after his 79th birthday.

plant

Loewe came to endocrinology from pharmacology, as he wrote in 1925: "Hormone therapy is a drug therapy, hormone effects are pharmacological effects, and there is no failing to go astray if one tries to work with such effects on the bedside while neglecting the principles of experimental pharmacology. " He improved the Allen-Doisy method, a biological measurement method for estrogens published in 1923 , which was used to detect estrogens in the blood and urine of women for the first time in 1926 and found that the estrogen content reached its maximum at the time of the follicle rupture. The work was a prerequisite for the pure representation of "Follicle Hormone" in 1930 by Adolf Butenandt . In the meantime, Loewe had turned to the male sex hormone. Together with his colleague Hermann E. Voss, he first developed a biological measurement method, the Loewe-Voss test, and used it to detect androgens in the urine of men and in the blood of bulls for the first time from 1928 to 1930 . Again this was a prerequisite for Butenandt's 1931 pure representation of "Testikelhormon". Loewe recognized that estrogens and androgens always occur side by side in the organism. Between 1925 and 1932 he published more than 50 original works on sex hormones, including those on the occurrence of sex hormones in plants.

This latter aspect may have made it easier for him to switch to cannabis research in the USA. With the chemist Roger Adams from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and others, he obtained cannabinol , cannabidiol and, the main carrier of the effect, a mixture of tetrahydrocannabinols from cannabis extracts . He compared the active ingredient content of cannabis from different origins, described the spectrum of effects, including an analgesic effect and determined relationships between chemical structure and pharmacological effect. Some results need to be modified in retrospect, because it was not until 1964, a year after Loewe's death, that Yehiel Gaoni and Raphael Mechoulam from the Weizmann Institute for Sciences in Rehovot , Israel identified (-) - Δ 9 - trans -tetrahydrocannabinol as the main active ingredient. That is the essence of scientific research. However, one sentence that is important for human use remains unchanged, with which Loewe concluded a major review in 1950: "After the risk of getting used to in the sense of addiction and increased tolerance, the cannabis active ingredients seem to be in the last place among the 'drugs', according to the breadth between threshold and deadly effects, some of them are at the forefront of all pharmaceuticals. " That corresponds to today's knowledge.

In addition to the experimental work, Loewe's entire scientific career was accompanied by rethinking problems in general pharmacology, especially the question of how effects can be quantified when medicinal substances are given in combination.

recognition

In 1932 Loewe became a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina . Around 1930 he became a member of the German Pharmacological Society, but in the mid-1930s it was deleted from its membership lists. In 1958 the Society elected him an honorary member. In 1950 the medical faculty in Heidelberg appointed him an honorary professor again. In memory of Lesser and Loewe, the first two directors of the main laboratory of the Mannheim Municipal Hospitals, the Lesser Loewe Foundation eV was founded in Mannheim to promote clinical, particularly biochemical and endocrinological research at the Mannheim University Hospital . The foundation awards a science prize endowed with € 10,000. On Loewe's 70th birthday, Heubner wrote to him in an open letter: "You have learned more about everything human than many others on the smooth track. You have become deeper aware of your own worth through multiple, hard tests. If you have the proud row of yours Survey work, discoveries and original thoughts, you can give yourself a certificate that you have grown with your pounds. " Two volumes of the Handbuch der Experimental Pharmakologie , edited in 1973 and 1974 by Loewe's former colleague Voss, deal with androgens and antiandrogens. Voss wrote on the flyleaf: "Dedicated to the memory of the pharmacologist and endocrinologist Professor Dr.med. WS Loewe".

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Engel:  Loewe, Siegfried Walter. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 15, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-428-00196-6 , p. 85 f. ( Digitized version ).
  2. ^ H. Herken: Opening address. In: Naunyn-Schmiedebergs Archive for Experimental Pathology and Pharmacology 1965; 250, pp. 95-104.
  3. ↑ a b R. Kattermann: Walter Siegfried Loewe (1884–1963). His contribution to the analysis, biology and pharmacology of sex hormones. In: Journal of Clinical Chemistry and Clinical Biochemistry 1984; 22, pp. 505-514.
  4. ↑ K.öffelholz and U. Trendelenburg : Persecuted German-speaking pharmacologists 1933–1945 . 2nd Edition. Dr. Schrör Verlag, Frechen 2008, p. 115.
  5. ↑ S. Loewe: From the cradle of pharmacology. In: Archives of Experimental Pathology and Pharmacology. 104, 1924, pp. 1-5.
  6. ↑ A. Butenandt: About the chemical investigation of the sex hormones. In: Angewandte Chemie. 1931; 44, pp. 905-908.
  7. ↑ S. Loewe: Cannabis active ingredients and pharmacology of cannabinoids. In: Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archive for experimental pathology and pharmacology. 1950; 211, pp. 175-193.
  8. ↑ H. Bönisch, E. Schlicker, M. Göthert and W. Maier: Psychopharmaka - Pharmacotherapy of mental illnesses. In: K. Aktories, U. Förstermann, F. Hofmann, K. Starke: General and special pharmacology and toxicology. 10th edition. Urban & Fischer, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-437-42512-7 , pp. 307-341.
  9. ↑ Website of the "Lesser Loewe Foundation eV"
  10. ↑ Wolfgang Heubner: On the 70th birthday of Prof. Dr. Siegfried W. Loewe on August 19, 1954. In: Arzneimittel-Forschung . 1954; 4, pp. 520-521.
  11. ^ HE Voss and G. Oertel: Androgene I. Handbook of experimental pharmacology, Volume 35/1. Berlin, Springer-Verlag 1973. ISBN 3-540-05706-4
personal data
SURNAME Loewe, Siegfried Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pharmacologist, endocrinologist and clinical chemist
DATE OF BIRTH August 19, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Fuerth
DATE OF DEATH August 24, 1963
Place of death Salt Lake City , Utah