Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1896–1899
1888–1889 1891–1896 1899–1906
1854 1878–1887 Institute for Serum 1906 1908 1915
TBC infection and Institute for Royal Institute of
Birth Charité Hospital Resarch Georg-Speyer-House Nobel Prize Death
travel to Egypt Infectious Diseases Experimental Therapy
and Testing
effective immunization protocols, and proposed the use lar structure that allowed it to bind with a specific toxin
of horses for the commercial production of the serum. corresponding to diphtheria, tetanus, or some other mi-
Soon Ehrlich was placed at the head of the new State In- croorganism. This strictly specific binding between the
stitute for Serum Research and Serum Testing in Berlin toxin and the side-chain, in a manner similar to the ‘lock-
(1896), which was later moved to its permanent location and-key’ model for enzymes and their substrates de-
in Frankfurt [10, 13]. The Institute was created to pre- scribed in 1894 by Hermann Emil Fischer (1852–1919),
serve standard preparations, devise new, more accurate would mean the cell lost its normal function, a phenom-
methods of determining the effectiveness of sera, and enon which in turn would trigger the production of ad-
study the complex relations which govern the neutraliza- ditional side-chains. A large part of these newly produced
tion of toxins by antitoxins [15]. excess side-chains would be released into the blood
Von Behring received the first Nobel Prize for Medi- stream, where they would act as antibodies or antitoxins
cine in 1901 as the principal discoverer of serum therapy, upon binding to the toxin present in the blood, and would
when Ehrlich was also a firm candidate for the award [16]. thus prevent the toxin from binding to other cells in the
However, it was not until 7 years later when the Swedish organism. Thus a small amount of toxin could produce a
academy recognized Ehrlich’s contribution in adapting large amount of antitoxin able to neutralize the toxin’s
this therapy to actual medical application by means of own effect [13].
what is now called biological standardization [1, 15]. In 1900, Ehrlich introduced the term ‘receptor’ as a
With the aim of proposing a plausible explanation for substitute for the term ‘receptive side-chain’. This idea led
the process of immunity, it was in 1897 when Ehrlich for- to a more functional concept that could be applied to the
mulated his ‘side-chain theory’, which became the basis field of pharmacology. John Newport Langley (1852–
for his immunological research at the time. This theory 1925) (table 1), who studied the effect of alkaloids on
postulated that cells present on their surface a set of side- muscle cells, proposed the existence of receptors that
chains to which Ehrlich attributed functions related with could be blocked by antagonists or activated through the
the assimilation of metabolic products. A side-chain from action of agonists. Although they came from very differ-
a given cell might have, by simple coincidence, a molecu- ent research backgrounds, the interaction between Ehr-
OH H 2N As OH
OH
a b
O
HO As OH
As As
HO OH
N C H3 NH NH
H
O O
O
c d
H 2N As As NH 2
As As
HO OH
HO OH
e f
O
As
H 2N As As NH
CH2 SO 2 Na
NH 2
HO OH
OH
g h
R
R H 2N N NH
As
R= OH R R
As As As
N N S
As As As
As As
NH2 R R
R R NH 2 S
OH
i j
Fig. 3. Chemical structures of the main arsenical compounds di- pound No. 418. e Arsenophenol. f Salvarsan, arsphenamine, com-
rectly related to Ehrlich’s discoveries. a Original but incorrect pound No. 606. g Neosalvarsan, neoarsphenamine, compound
structural formula of Atoxyl, according to Béchamp. b Correct No. 914. h Mapharsen, oxophenarsine. i Salvarsan’s main constit-
formula of Atoxyl, aminophenylarsenic acid. c Arsacetin, acetyla- uents. j Arsobal, melarsoprol.
toxyl, compound No. 306. d Spirarsyl, arsenophenylglycine, com-
References
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