V. Craig Jordan

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V. Craig Jordan 2015

Virgil Craig Jordan (* 1947 in New Braunfels , Texas ) is a British - American pharmacologist . He is known for the introduction of tamoxifen in the chemotherapy against breast cancer .

Life

Jordan moved to England with his British parents as a child. He took an early interest in chemistry and studied pharmacology at the University of Leeds with a degree in 1969 and a doctorate in 1972. As a post-doctoral student he was at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, and in 1974 became a lecturer in pharmacology at the university of Leeds. In 1979 he was at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at the University of Bern . In 1980 he went to the University of Wisconsin – Madison , where he received a full professorship in 1985. In 1993 he became professor of cancer pharmacology at the Medical School of Northwestern University in Chicago and director of the research program on breast cancer at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University. From 1999 he was Diana Princess of Wales Professor of Cancer Research there . In 2005 he became the Alfred G. Knudson Professor of Cancer Research at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia . He was then Scientific Director at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University before becoming Professor of Oncology at the MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas at Houston .

plant

In his dissertation he dealt with the effects of triphenylethylene and its derivatives in the body. Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) had hoped to develop a morning-after pill with this substance, which had anti- estrogen effects , but instead tests showed that the chances of fertilization increased if taken. His doctoral thesis was reviewed by Arthur Walpole, who was responsible for the pharmacological development of triphenylethylene at ICI (code name of the substance was ICI 46474). Walpole placed Jordan in a post-doctoral position at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology in Massachusetts and encouraged him to investigate the potential use of triphenylethylene as a chemotherapy agent for breast cancer. The basic idea was that the substance would block the docking sites for estrogen in the breast cancer cells and thus prevent the tumor from growing. In experiments with rats, Jordan previously discovered that estrogen was necessary for the initial growth of induced breast cancer tumors. With tamoxifen (a derivative of triphenylethylene) he was able to stop breast cancer growth in rats. His work was initially received critically and could not be published until 1976. Tamoxifen was approved for breast cancer patients in the USA as early as 1978.

Jordan found in the 1970s that tamoxifen had to be administered over several years to be effective against breast cancer (eventually a standard period of five years emerged). Since estrogen was important for the cardiovascular system and bone growth in women, there were concerns that long-term use of tamoxifen could lead to osteoporosis and heart disease. In a study published in 1992 on 140 post-menopausal women with breast cancer in their medical history, however, this could be eliminated: the cholesterol level rather fell compared to the control group and the bone density increased. This showed that tamoxifen and the related raloxifene (which is also used as a drug against osteoporosis) did not block estrogen everywhere, but acted selectively ( selective estrogen receptor modulator , SERM).

Later he turned to the question of the development of resistance of breast cancer tumors to tamoxifen and to the fact that, for some breast cancer tumors, estrogen has long been known and apparently contradicting the previous successes with the estrogen receptor blocking substances in chemotherapy inhibits. In the mid-1980s, tamoxifen-resistant breast cancer tumors could be examined in a mouse model, and in Jordan’s laboratory it was found in the 1990s that they shrank after treatment with estrogen. He suspected that the cancer cells, which had been blocked for a long time, overreacted to a sudden administration of estrogen, even at low doses, which triggered cell death, and suggested low-dose estrogen treatment for tamoxifen-resistant tumors and as a preventive measure for patients for several years of menopause.

Honors and memberships

In 2003 he received the Kettering Prize , in 2008 the David A. Karnofsky Award and in 2011 the St. Gallen Prize. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences . He is OBE (2003) and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine . In 1985 he received an honorary doctorate (D.Sc.) from the University of Leeds.

Fonts

  • SR Cummings, VC Jordan et al. a .: The effect of raloxifene on risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal women: Results from the MORE randomized trial. Multiple Outcomes of Raloxifene Evaluation. JAMA: the Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 281, 1999, pp. 2189-2197, PMID 10376571
  • VC Jordan: Tamoxifen: catalyst for the change to targeted therapy, European J. Cancer, Volume 44, 2008, pp. 30-38, PMID 18068350
  • VC Jordan: Tamoxifen (ICI 46,474) as a targeted therapy to treat and prevent breast cancer. Br. J. Pharmacol., Vol. 147, Suppl. 1, 2006, pp. 269-276.
  • VC Jordan: The 38th David A. Karnofsky Lecture: The paradoxical actions of estrogen in breast cancer - survival or death, J ClinOncol., Volume 26, 2008, pp. 3073-3082.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jordan, Effect of tamoxifen (ICI 46,474) on initiation and growth of DMBA-induced rat mammary carcinomata, European Journal of Cancer, Volume 12, 1976, pp 419-424
  2. ↑ RR Love, et al. a. Effects of tamoxifen therapy on lipid and lipoprotein levels in postmenopausal patients with node-negative breast cancer, J Natl Cancer Inst., Vol. 82, 1990, pp. 1327-1332
  3. ↑ RR Love et al. a., Effects of tamoxifen on bone mineral density in postmenopausal women with breast cancer, N Engl J Med., Vol. 326, 1992, pp. 852-856
personal data
SURNAME Jordan, V. Craig
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jordan, Virgil Craig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-American pharmacologist
DATE OF BIRTH 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH New Braunfels , Texas