Альфред Гудман Гилман: Жизнь и научные достижения

American pharmacologist

Alfred Goodman Gilman (July 1, 1941 – December 23, 2015) was an American pharmacologist and biochemist. He and Martin Rodbell shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discovery of G proteins and the role of these proteins in signal transduction in cells." Gilman was the son of Alfred Gilman, who co authored Goodman & Gilman's The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics with Louis S. Goodman, from whom his middle name came. He earned a BA in biology with major in biochemistry from Yale University. Immediately after graduation in 1962, he worked with Allan Conney at Burroughs Wellcome & Company, which resulted in the publication of his first two technical papers. Persuaded by Earl Wilbur Sutherland, Jr., he joined Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine for an MD PhD course. He obtained his degree in 1969. He then went to the National Institutes of Health to work with Marshall Nirenberg between 1969 and 1971. Gilman became assistant professor of pharmacology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in 1971, and full professor in 1977. He chaired the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas from 1981. Upon his retirement in 2009, he was appointed chief scientific officer of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. He resigned in 2012. He was the founder of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals company and the Alliance for Cellular Signaling. From 2005, he was also director of Eli Lilly and Company. G proteins are a vital intermediary between the extracellular activation of receptors (G protein coupled receptors) on the cell membrane and actions within the cell. Rodbell had shown in the 1960s that GTP was involved in cell signaling. It was Gilman who actually discovered the proteins that interacted with the GTP to initiate signalling cascades within the cell, and thus, giving the name G proteins. For his works, he received the Canada Gairdner Foundation International Award in 1984, Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize in 1989, in addition to Nobel Prize. He was elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Fellow of the American Association for Cancer Research Academy, and, since 2013 (or earlier), member of the advisory council of the National Center for Science Education.

Gilman was born in New Haven, Connecticut, as he later commented, "with a scientific/academic silver spoon" in his mouth, "or perhaps a pestle (but not the mortar)." His parents were Mabel (Schmidt) and Alfred Gilman, a professor at the Yale School of Medicine and one of the authors of the classic pharmacology textbook Goodman & Gilman's The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics (nicknamed the "Blue Bible" of pharmacology). His middle name was in honor of the co author Louis S. Goodman. The book was published in 1941, the year he was born. His friend Michael Stuart Brown (who was also born in 1941, and later the 1985 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate) joked that Gilman was "probably the only person who was ever named after a textbook.") He had an elder sister Joanna Gilman. He grew up in White Plains, New York, while his father worked at Columbia University and Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He studied science at Yale University. His first research project was to test the adaptor hypothesis of Francis Crick. He worked in the laboratory of Melvin Simpson, where he met his future wife Kathryn Hedlund. During summer break in 1962, he briefly worked at Burroughs Wellcome & Company in New York, under with Allan Conney. With Conney he published his first two research papers in 1963. He then entered a combined MD PhD program at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio where he wanted to study under Nobel laureate pharmacologist Earl Sutherland, who was a close friend of his father. It was Sutherland who had introduced the combined MD PhD course, and invited Gilman to join course. But to Gilman, a seven year program was like "an eternity in purgatory" and that he preferred not to have a degree in pharmacology, so he refused. Sutherland later persuaded him by explaining that pharmacology was "just biochemistry with a purpose." The work was a simple and vital biochemical assay for studying cyclic AMP.

In 1971, Gilman was appointed assistant professor of pharmacology at the University of Virginia, School of Medicine, in Charlottesville, Virginia. He became full professor in 1977. In 1981, he became chairman of the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. He retired from university in 2009 to hold the office the chief scientific officer of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. He, however, resigned after three years as he felt that the administration was under commercial and political pressures. His resignation was followed by seven senior scientists. He became its director from 1990. In 2005, he was appointed director of the drug company, Eli Lilly & Co. Cyclic AMP is formed from ATP by the enzymes adenylyl cyclase. In 1970 Martin Rodbell found that hormones did not directly influence cyclic AMP, but there existed other molecules, the third messengers. Rodbell discovered that cyclic AMP is activated when guanosine triphosphate (GTP) is released from the cell membrane. He, however, did not know how the GTP molecules were produced. In 1980, he succeeded in identifying and isolating the new protein, which he named G protein, as it specifically binds to GTP molecules.

Gilman was given the Canada Gairdner International Award in 1984 "For elucidating the mechanism by which peptide hormones act across cell membranes to influence cell function." He received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research as well as the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University in 1989 together with Edwin Krebs. In 1995, Gilman received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In 2005, he was elected as Dean of University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, Dallas. He served on the board of advisors of Scientists and Engineers for America, an organization focused on promoting sound science in American government. He was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1986. He was elected Fellow of the American Association for Cancer Research Academy in 2013. He was elected member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received honorary doctorates from Case Western Reserve University, Yale University, University of Chicago, and University of Miami.