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NLM's "Profiles in Science" Web Site Adds Axelrod
Papers
Nobel Laureate Still Performing Research at
NIH
The accomplishments of some of the giants of 20th century
biomedicine are newly available as NLM makes the scientists'
archival collections accessible through the latest digital
technology on its "Profiles in Science" web site (profiles.nlm.nih.gov).
The most recent addition to the "Profiles" archive is pharmacologist
and neuroscientist Julius Axelrod, who shared the 1970 Nobel Prize
for discoveries "concerning the humoral transmittors in the nerve
terminals and the mechanism for their storage, release and
inactivation." Dr. Axelrod spent his most fruitful years of research
at NIH, first at the (then) National Heart Institute and later at
the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
According to a recent ABC News poll, one of every eight adults in
the US has taken Prozac or a similar drug to help relieve anxiety or
depression. That they can do so is the result of research by Dr.
Axelrod in the 1960's. His work enabled pharmaceutical firms to
create anti-depressants like Prozac. "Axelrod did not invent Prozac,
but he discovered how early antidepressant drugs work in the brain,
and he coined the term 'reuptake' to describe those actions," says
Dr. Alexa McCray who directs the "Profiles in Science" project at
NLM. McCray directs the Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical
Communications.
Since his discovery in the early 1960s, Julius Axelrod's
explanation for how neurotransmitters work has forever altered the
way modern pharmaceutical companies design antidepressant drugs.
Furthermore, Axelrod's work has greatly advanced how scientists
understand the biological basis of human behavior. Axelrod was
awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with
Sir Bernard Katz of University College London and Dr. Ulf von Euler
of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
Julius Axelrod was born May 30, 1912 in New York City, the son of
a Polish immigrant who supported the family as a basketmaker.
Axelrod's mother wanted him to be a doctor, but his grades were not
good enough and his Jewish heritage also made it difficult for him
to get into medical school. After graduating from the City
University of New York in 1933, Axelrod was a chemist for the New
York City Department of Health and worked for a variety of
university and government-sponsored laboratories through 1949.
During this period, he helped to discover the pain-relieving
medicine acetaminophen, better known by its brand name, Tylenol.
Axelrod also lost the sight of his left eye in the mid-1940s when a
bottle of ammonia exploded in his face. Despite this accident, he
continued to work in the laboratory.
In 1949, Axelrod moved to the National Heart Institute. He became
increasingly interested in how drugs affect the nervous system and
was one of the first scientists to conduct full studies of caffeine,
amphetamine, and mescaline. In 1954, Axelrod shifted offices to the
NIMH. Over the next 30 years, until his retirement in 1984, he
worked on research projects that sought to elucidate the
relationship between drugs and behavior. After he received the Nobel
Prize in 1970, Axelrod became a visible public figure. As he
remarked in 1978, "I was always conscious of [political issues], but
before no one asked me to sign petitions. A Nobel Laureate's
signature is very visible." In 1973, for example, Axelrod joined
other prominent U.S. scientists who decried the former USSR
government's treatment of the dissident nuclear scientist Andrei
Sakharov.
The new "Profiles" site shows off a variety of documents and
includes materials that span the various phases of Axelrod's life
and career. These include examples from his extensive collection of
laboratory notebooks showing his early experiments involving
caffeine and LSD, an unpublished manuscript from 1994, and a large
sampling of his most important published articles.
Axelrod, known to friends as "Julie," still comes to the lab
about three times a week to conduct research, according to Dr.
Michael J. Brownstein, Chief, Laboratory of Genetics, NIMH/National
Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). As Brownstein recounts, "He
has a greater capacity than most scientists to take pleasure in
other people's novel findings and to suggest follow-up experiments."
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