William S. Tillett
William Smith Tillett (* July 10, 1892 in Charlotte, North Carolina; † 4 April 1974) was an American internist and microbiologist. He is known especially for his discovery of C- reactive protein and streptokinase.
Life and work
Tillett studied at the University of North Carolina, where he was sporting success as an All - American quarterback, too. In 1913 he started at the Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, Maryland, to study medicine, which he in 1917 with the MD completed. Interrupted by two years of military service, graduated as a medical officer in World War Tillett his time as a medical assistant also at Johns Hopkins Medical School. For a year he worked at several stations in Europe before 1922 a position at the Hospital of the Rockefeller Institute (later Rockefeller University) was given in New York City and published his first work with Thomas M. Rivers.
In 1924 Tillett on the pneumonia station by Rufus Cole, where he worked under scientifically Oswald Avery and began to deal with pneumococci and streptococci. Together with Avery and Walther F. Goebel analyzed Tillett the polysaccharides of the pneumococcal envelope and discovered that the response of the infected organism is largely determined by this shell. Together with Thomas Francis junior, he discovered a protein that is directed against the so-called C- fraction of these polysaccharides and as C- reactive protein ( CRP) is known. CRP as acute phase protein is still an important marker of inflammation. Building on the work of Francis and Tillett for the body's response to pneumococcal polysaccharides developed Colin MacLeod and Michael Heidelberger 1944, pneumococcal vaccination, which was brought by Robert Austrian for clinical use.
In the early 1930s received Tillett a position as assistant professor of internal medicine and biology at Johns Hopkins Medical School. Here he began increasingly to deal with streptococci and their enzymes. Tillett discovered in 1933 that hemolytic streptococci produce an enzyme that can dissolve fibrin clots. Tillett called this enzyme fibrinolysin, today it is known as streptokinase. In 1937, Tillett professor of bacteriology at the New York University School of Medicine, and in 1938 just a professor of internal medicine and chief physician of the internal medicine clinics at Bellevue Hospital. Tilletts successor to the professorship were first Thomas Francis Jr. and 1941 Colin MacLeod. One of Tilletts research assistants Maclyn McCarty in 1940, he mediated a year later to Avery at the Rockefeller University and the Avery later clarifying that deoxyribonucleic acid ( DNA) and proteins are not the carriers of genetic information.
Together with Royal Lauritz Christensen discovered Tillett that streptokinase converts plasminogen to plasmin and so initiates fibrinolysis. With Christensen and Sol Sherry Tillett discovered that another enzyme hemolytic streptococci, streptodornase can liquefy thick pus. Together with the company Lederle Tillett could produce the enzyme in sufficient quantities to apply it clinically, for example against viscous pleural empyema, which otherwise often led to Verschwartung of the pleura. Tillett called the method of enzymatic debridement, which is still used today for the dissolution of fibrin chronic wounds. 1955 used Tillett and employees for the first time when streptokinase Mens Chan, thus laying the basis for the clinical application of the enzyme to dissolve blood clots, thrombolysis, which today is used in heart attacks and strokes.
Further work Tilletts dealt since 1942 with the use of penicillin in pneumonia. He found that the effectiveness of the antibiotic tissue levels is more important than the serum levels and the duration of therapy was more important than the applied maximum dose because patients only on the seventh day of infection develop effective amounts of antibodies against pneumococci. The use of penicillin and streptodornase in the pleural space in addition to systemic therapy with penicillin improved the prognosis of pneumonia patients significantly.
Tillett was married to Dorothy Stockbridge since 1928. The couple had a daughter. 1958 Tillett went into retirement. In his honor, a section of the building with research laboratories at Bellevue Hospital was named William Smith Tillett Laboratories. At the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases ( NIAID), a facility of the National Institutes of Health ( NIH) Tillett was still managing a training program for young researchers.