Edwin B. Astwood
Edwin B. Astwood ( born December 19, 1909 in Hamilton, Bermuda, † February 17, 1976 ) was an endocrinologist at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. He is known especially for the development of anti-thyroid drugs, drugs used to treat hyperthyroidism.
Life and work
Astwood grew up in Bermuda. He attended college in Ohio and graduated in medicine at the College of Medical Evangelists at Loma Linda University (California ) and McGill University ( Montreal, Canada) in 1934 with the MD from. As a medical assistant Astwood worked among others, Hans Selye at the Royal Victoria Hospital Montreal, before he moved to the pathology of the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1937 he was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship to work at Harvard University Frederick L. Hisaw in endocrinology. 1939 earned a Ph.D. there Astwood and went back to Johns Hopkins University to work in the local gynecology. Together with Georgeanna Seegar Jones, he developed a new method to measure pregnanediol in the urine, and he described Luteotropin in the rat. Soma Weiss took Astwood back to Boston, where he worked at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and a professor ( assistant professor ) at Otto Krayer at Harvard Medical School received.
At Harvard, Astwood get important contributions to the physiology and pathophysiology of the thyroid. Starting from the observation that sulfaguanidine and Phenylthiourea caused a goiter in experimental animals, found Astwood that thionamides, sulfonamides, and aniline derivatives inhibit the synthesis of thyroid hormones by the body interfered with binding of iodine. Thiocyanates and perchlorates, however, inhibit the pump, the iodine against a concentration gradient in the thyroid cell pump (now known as the sodium - iodide symporter ). Astwood transferred his findings in the treatment of Patioenten with hyperthyroidism and found that propylthiouracil among the tested substances had the lowest rate of side effects. Astwood also conducted investigations with radioactive iodine by the quantitative determination of the uptake of iodine into the thyroid gland. So he was able to determine that the inhibition of iodide uptake by thiamazole was 100 times stronger than that produced by propylthiouracil. Astwoods investigations are still the basis for tests of thyroid function (such as the perchlorate depletion test) and the pituitary gland.
Astwood joined in 1945 as professor of internal medicine at the Tufts University Medical School ( also in Boston ), where he simultaneously work as a senior physician at the New England Medical Center Hospital and the JH Pratt Diagnostic Hospital and the Boston Dispensary and was able to build a large endocrinology research laboratory. In 1952, he received a full professorship at Tufts University. Here Astwood dealt further with the axis of the pituitary - thyroid (now known as thyreotroper loop) and their significance for the growth in size of the thyroid gland and re - established the treatment of goiter with thyroid hormones. Further work Astwoods dealt with the adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH ), the methods to extract it from bovine pituitary and its biochemical and physical properties. In addition, he was concerned with the effect of ACTH and Growth Hormone (GH, somatropin ) on lipid metabolism.
Astwood 1973 became Professor Emeritus, but continued to work as a doctor. Astwood was married since 1937 with Sara ( Sally ) Merritt. The couple had two children.
Awards (selection)
The Endocrine Society has awarded since 1977 Edwin B. Astwood Award Lecture.