William S. Tillett

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William Smith Tillett (born July 10, 1892 in Charlotte , North Carolina , † April 4, 1974 ) was an American internist and microbiologist . He is best known for discovering C-reactive protein and streptokinase .

Life

Tillett studied at the University of North Carolina , where he was also successful in sports as an All-American quarterback . In 1913 he began at the Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore , Maryland , a degree in medicine, which he graduated with an MD in 1917 . Interrupted by two years of military service as a medical officer in World War I , Tillett completed his time as an assistant doctor at the Johns Hopkins Medical School. For a year he worked at various stations in Europe before taking a position at the hospital of the Rockefeller Institute (later Rockefeller University) in 1922) in New York City and published his first work with Thomas M. Rivers .

In 1924 Tillett moved to Rufus Cole's pneumonia ward , where he worked scientifically under Oswald Avery and began to study pneumococci and streptococci . Together with Avery and Walther F. Goebel , Tillett analyzed the polysaccharides of the envelope of the pneumococci and discovered that the response of the infected organism is essentially determined by this envelope. Together with Thomas Francis junior , he discovered a protein that is directed against the so-called C fraction of these polysaccharides and is known as C-reactive protein (CRP). As an acute phase protein , CRP is still an important marker for inflammation today . Building on the work of Francis and Tillett on the body's reaction to pneumococcal polysaccharides, Colin MacLeod and Michael Heidelberger developed a vaccination against pneumococci in 1944 , which Robert Austrian brought to clinical use.

In the early 1930s, Tillett received a position as an assistant professor of internal medicine and biology at the Johns Hopkins Medical School. Here he began to deal increasingly with streptococci and their enzymes . In 1933, Tillett discovered that hemolytic streptococci produce an enzyme that can break up clumps of fibrin . Tillett called this enzyme fibrinolysin ; today it is known as streptokinase . In 1937 Tillett became professor of bacteriology at the New York University School of Medicine and in 1938 professor of internal medicine there, as well as chief physician of one of the internal medicine clinics at Bellevue Hospital . Tillett's successors on the professorship were initially Thomas Francis junior and in 1941 Colin MacLeod. One of Tillett's research assistants was Maclyn McCarty in 1940 , whom he referred to Avery at Rockefeller University a year later and with whom Avery later explained that deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and not proteins are the carriers of genetic information.

Together with Lauritz Royal Christensen , Tillett discovered that streptokinase converts plasminogen into plasmin and thus triggers fibrinolysis . With Christensen and Sol Sherry , Tillett discovered that another enzyme of hemolytic streptococci, streptodornase, can liquefy thick pus . Together with the Lederle company , Tillett was able to produce sufficient quantities of the enzyme for clinical use, for example against viscous pleural empyema , which otherwise often lead to degeneration of the pleura . Tillett called the method enzymatic debridement , which is still used today to dissolve fibrin coatings in chronic wounds. In 1955, Tillett and co-workers first used streptokinase in humans and thus laid the basis for the clinical application of the enzyme to dissolve blood clots , thrombolysis , which is still used today in heart attacks and strokes .

From 1942 onwards, Tillett's further work dealt with the use of penicillin in pneumonia . He found that the tissue level is more important than the serum level for the effectiveness of the antibiotic and that the duration of therapy was more important than the maximum dose used, since patients do not develop effective levels of antibodies against the pneumococci until the seventh day of infection . The use of penicillin and streptodornase in the pleural space in addition to systemic therapy with penicillin improved the prognosis of pneumonia patients considerably.

Tillett had been married to Dorothy Stockbridge since 1928. The couple had a daughter. In 1958 Tillett retired. A wing with research laboratories at Bellevue Hospital was named William Smith Tillett Laboratories in his honor . At the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a facility of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Tillett was appointed head of a training program for young researchers.

Awards (selection)

literature

  • H. Sherwood Lawrence: William Smith Tillett (1892–1974). In: Biographical Memoir. National Academy of Sciences 1993 (PDF, 1.5 MB)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award 1949 Winners at the Lasker Foundation (laskerfoundation.org); accessed on February 15, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Tillett, William S.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tillett, William Smith (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American internist and microbiologist
DATE OF BIRTH July 10, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Charlotte , North Carolina
DATE OF DEATH April 4th 1974