Paul Ehrlich

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German physician, bacteriologist, and chemist (1854–1915)

Born in Strehlen (now Strzelin in Poland), Ehrlich studied medicine at the universities of Breslau, Strasbourg, and Freiburg, gaining a physician's degree at Breslau in 1878. For the next nine years he worked at the Charité Hospital, Berlin, on many topics including typhoid fever, tuberculosis, and pernicious anemia. He was awarded the title of professor by the Prussian Ministry of Education in 1884 for his impressive work in these fields. In 1887 he became a teacher at the University of Berlin but was not paid because of the antisemitic feeling at the time – Ehrlich would not renounce his Jewish upbringing. As a result of his laboratory work he contracted tuberculosis and was not restored to health until 1890, when he set up his own small research laboratory at Steglitz on the outskirts of Berlin.

In 1890 Robert Koch announced the discovery of tuberculin and suggested its use in preventing and curing tuberculosis. He asked Ehrlich to work on it with him at the Moabit Hospital in Berlin. Ehrlich accepted and for six years studied TB and cholera. In 1896 he accepted the post of director of the new Institute for Serum Research and Serum Investigation at Steglitz and in 1899 moved to the Institute of Experimental Therapy in Frankfurt. Here he investigated African sleeping sickness and syphilis along with his other studies. In 1908 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for his work on immunity and serum therapy.

Two years later he announced his most famous discovery, Salvarsan – a synthetic chemical that was effective against syphilis – and until the end of his life he worked on the problems associated with the treatment of patients using this compound of arsenic.

Ehrlich is considered to be the founder of modern chemotherapy because he developed systematic scientific techniques to search for new synthetic chemicals that could specifically attack disease-causing microorganisms. Ehrlich sought for these ‘magic bullets’ by carefully altering the chemical structure of dye molecules that selectively stained the microorganisms observable in his microscope but did not stain cells in the host. He was persevering and optimistic – Salvarsan (compound number 606) was not ‘rediscovered’ until almost 1000 compounds had been synthesized and tried. He made and tested about 3000 compounds based on the structure of Salvarsan in an attempt to make a drug that was bacteriocidal to streptococci.

Paul Ehrlich (1854–1915), a German chemist, was a pioneer in the field of applied organic chemistry. He worked initially on dyestuffs and staining methods for microscopic study of bacteria; and then, beginning in 1891, at the Koch Institute in Berlin, on the search for drugs that would be effective against some of the bacteria that had by then been identified as the specific causes of many diseases. Ehrlich's early work on antitoxins evolved into a systematic examination of many candidate chemicals that might be effective against Treponema pallidum, the spirochaete responsible for syphilis. At that time, syphilis was a common disease and a serious public health problem. This work was based on the observation that many chemicals exhibited selective affinity for specific organisms and tissues. In 1909, in collaboration with Sakahiro Hata, a Japanese colleague at the Koch Institute, he developed Salvarsan, an arsenical that killed the spirochaete without killing the patient—although it did have some toxic side effects. Ehrlich was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1908.

(SEE ALSO: Syphilis)

— JOHN M. LAST

The German bacteriologist Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915) advanced the science and practice of medicine by applying the fast-growing achievements of organic chemistry to the problems of disease. He is known for his discovery of Salvarsan.

Paul Ehrlich was born on March 14, 1854, at Strehlen, Upper Silesia. While still at school he took a great interest in chemical experiments and even got the local druggist to compound throat lozenges according to his original prescription.

Preparatory Work

At first Ehrlich attended Breslau University but found it dull and uninteresting because it lacked biology and organic chemistry, his favorite subjects. Accordingly, he passed on to the new University of Strasbourg, where he experimented with histological staining, but he returned to Breslau in his third term. In 1878 he graduated in medicine at Leipzig. His thesis was a contribution on the theory and practice of histological staining - the conception of the processes in their chemical, technological, and histological aspects - in which his idea of a chemical binding of heterogeneous substances to protoplasm was first expressed. Already in 1876, he had discovered the "mast" cell by its basophilic granules.

Early in his student career Ehrlich started investigations which in spite of their apparent diversity converged on a common principle: the action of drugs as a manifestation of their specific affinity for particular constituents of cells. According to Ehrlich, substances which affect bodily functions do so by virtue of combining with particular components of the animal. In chemical idiom, certain atom groups (side chains) of the drug combine with receptor atom groups of the cellular protoplasm and lead to the action. This was his famous "side-chain theory."

Ehrlich spent several years in Egypt recovering from a severe case of phthisis. On his return to Germany, Robert Koch, from whom Ehrlich had received an understanding of the modern discipline of cellular pathology and also the relation of bacteriology to disease processes, offered him a place in his new Institute for Infectious Diseases. Here Ehrlich perfected methods of preparing and standardizing diphtheria antitoxin from horses. Meanwhile he was appointed director of the State Institute for Serum Research and Serum Control at Steglitz near Berlin. Work on tumors and immunological studies occupied the forefront of his research until about 1909. In 1908 Ehrlich received the Nobel Prize in medicine for his studies on immunity.

Science of Chemotherapy

The Speyer-Ellissen family of Frankfurt offered to endow a research institute for Ehrlich's work on chemo-therapy. The institute, named George Speyer-Haus, was built, and in 1906 Ehrlich became director. The methods of chemotherapy, that is, treating infections with synthetic compounds antagonistic to pathogenic agents without seriously damaging the host, had arisen in 1891, when it was observed that methylene blue exercises a curative action on human malaria. Before the founding of the institute, Ehrlich had conducted work on an experimental scale with a small staff, and this resulted in a veritable miracle: the cure of a trypanosome infection that was invariably fatal in mice in 3 - 4 days. Cure followed one subcutaneous injection of a synthetic dye, trypan red, administered within 24 hours of the anticipated time of death. Other drugs were found to possess a degree of therapeutic effect, and certain organic arsenical compounds, "atoxyl" derivatives, also proved to be trypanocidal. From these the drug Salvarsan was derived, which Ehrlich found to be the most efficient curative agent for human syphilis then known, although it was sometimes liable to produce toxic effects. The science of chemotherapy was thus born.

Ehrlich's tremendous achievements were the outcome of a life of unremitting scientific preoccupation to which almost everything was sacrificed. The furor of Salvarsan made him one of the celebrities of his time, both in science and commerce. He died in Bad Homburg, Hesse, on Aug. 20, 1915.

Further Reading

For Ehrlich's own writings see F. Himmelweit, ed., The Collected Papers of Paul Ehrlich (1956). Accounts of Ehrlich's life and work are Herman Goodman, Paul Ehrlich: A Man of Genius and an Inspiration to Humanitarians (1924), and Martha Marquardt, Paul Ehrlich (1951). A sketch of his life is in Theodore L. Sourkes, Nobel Prize Winners in Medicine and Physiology, 1901-1965 (1953; rev. ed. 1966).

Quotes:

"The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts."

For the professor of population studies at Stanford University, see Paul R. Ehrlich

For other persons named Paul Ehrlich, see Paul Ehrlich (disambiguation).

Please expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German Wikipedia. (February 2009) After translating, {{Translated|de|Paul Ehrlich}} must be added to the talk page to ensure copyright compliance. Translation instructions · Translate via Google

Paul Ehrlich
Paul Ehrlich
Born	14 March 1854 (1854-03-14) Strzelin, Lower Silesia, German Kingdom of Prussia
Died	20 August 1915 (1915-08-21) (aged 61) Bad Homburg, Hesse, Germany
Citizenship	Germany
Fields	Immunology
Known for	autoimmunity
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine ( 1908)

Paul Ehrlich (14 March 1854 – 20 August 1915) was a German scientist in the fields of hematology, immunology, and chemotherapy, and Nobel laureate. He is noted for curing syphilis and for his research in autoimmunity, calling it "horror autotoxicus". He coined the term "chemotherapy" and popularized the concept of a "magic bullet".

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early years 1.2 Research 1.3 Personal life 2 Legacy 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

Biography

Early years

Paul Ehrlich was born into a Jewish family in Strehlen, in the German Kingdom of Prussia, Province of Silesia, (now in Poland). As a schoolboy and student of medicine he was interested in staining microscopic tissue substances.

Research

In his dissertation at the University of Leipzig, he picked up the topic again ("Contributions to the Theory and Practice of Histological Staining", Beiträge zur Theorie und Praxis der histologischen Färbung). He married Hedwig Pinkus (then aged 19) in 1883. The couple had two daughters, named Stephanie and Marianne. After his clinical education and habilitation ("The Need of the Organism for Oxygen ", Das Sauerstoffbedürfnis des Organismus) at the Charité in Berlin in 1886 he received a call from Robert Koch to join the Institute for Infectious Diseases in Berlin (1891).

Ehrlich spent two years in Egypt, recovering from tuberculosis. Thereafter he worked with his friend Emil Adolf von Behring on the development of the diphtheria serum.

Dr Paul Ehrlich & Dr Hata Sahachiro

These works inspired Ehrlich's famous side-chain theory (Seitenkettentheorie) from 1897. This theory explained the effects of serum and enabled measurement of the amount of antigen. In 1896 Ehrlich became the director of the newly founded Institute of Serum Research and Examination (Institut für Serumforschung und Serumprüfung) in Steglitz (Berlin). In 1899 the institute was moved to Frankfurt (Main) and extended into the Royal Institute of Experimental Therapy (Institut für experimentelle Therapie). Here Ehrlich researched chemotherapy and infectious diseases. In 1904 Ehrlich became honorary professor of the University of Göttingen.^[1]

Ehrlich received the Nobel Prize for Medicine together with Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov in 1908. In 1906 he discovered the structural formula of atoxyl, a chemical compound which had been shown to be able to treat sleeping sickness. Following this discovery, he tried to create a less toxic version of the medicament. In 1909 he and his student Sahachiro Hata developed Salvarsan, a treatment effective against syphilis.

Personal life

Erlich's daughter Marianne was married to the great German-Jewish mathematician Edmund Landau. Ehrlich died of a stroke in Bad Homburg in 1915, age 61. He is buried in the Juedischer Friedhof on Rat Beil Straße in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Legacy

1996 series 200 Deutsche Mark banknote

His life is depicted in the movie Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet, which focused on Salvarsan (arsphenamine, "compound 606"), his cure for syphilis. His work illuminated the existence of the blood-brain barrier.

The "magic bullet" concept comes from the experience of 19th century German chemists with selectively staining tissues for histological examination, and in particular, selectively staining bacteria (Ehrlich was an exceptionally gifted histological chemist, and invented the precursor technique to Gram staining bacteria). Ehrlich reasoned that if a compound could be made that selectively targeted a disease-causing organism, then a toxin for that organism could be delivered along with the agent of selectivity. Hence, a "magic bullet" would be created that killed only the organism targeted.

A problem with the use of the magic bullet concept as it emerged from its histological roots is that people confused the dye with the agent of tissue selectivity and antibiotic activity. Prontosil, a sulfa drug whose active component is sulfanilamide, is a classic example of the fact that color is not essential to antibacterial activity.

The concept of a "magic bullet" was fully realized with the invention of monoclonal antibodies.

Paul Ehrlich's life and achievements were filmed 1940 in Hollywood by William Dieterle in Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet with Edward G. Robinson in the title role.

See also

• German inventors and discoverers

References

1. ^ Herman A. Metz. Solving medical mysteries by help of animals. The New York Times, 28 January 1912

This article incorporates information from the equivalent article on the German Wikipedia.

External links

• Nobel Museum: Biography of Paul Ehrlich
• Paul Ehrlich, pharmaceutical achiever
• Paul Ehrlich's publications (ordered chronologically, as full-text PDF)
• Film Annotations Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet
• Bernhard Witkop (1999) Paul Ehrlich and His Magic Bullets—Revisited Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 143:4 p. 540–557.

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