Singular Triumph

For 24 years. Biochemist Choh Hao Li has devoted himself to discovering the functions of a small part of a small, lima-bean-sized gland that is lodged at the base of the human brain. With each experiment the Canton-born professor of biochemistry and endocrinology has come closer than any man before him to explaining how the front half of the human pituitary, the body's master gland, controls so many functions through the hormones it manufactures. Because his success represents a singular medical triumph, Dr. Li last week was awarded the $10,000 Albert Lasker Basic Research Award.*

Duplicating Nature. From the pitui-tary's front lobe. Biochemist Li has isolated no fewer than five other hormones, including the enormously potent adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). Three other hormones he discovered are involved in the female reproductive cycle; finally there is the human growth hormone (HGH, or somatotropin), which may yet prove to be the most important of all.

Dr. Li and others ferreted out the detailed structure of ACTH by complex and exquisitely delicate analytic processes. Then he set out to duplicate nature, or even improve on it. by making ACTH in the laboratory. The natural hormone contains 39 amino acids in a chain. Dr. Li made chains of 17 and 19 acids, and in some ways those short chains are almost as potent as the whole natural hormone; in other ways they are still more potent.

The natural hormone works like a shotgun and often has a variety of undesirable effects, stimulating the adrenal glands, for example, to produce excesses of other body-controlling hormones. The synthetic short-chain kind offers doctors the hope that it may be used to achieve a specific result in treating a specific disease. Manufactured ACTH can be used to reduce fat stores in the body and possibly to stimulate red-cell production.

Supply & Demand. With the isolation of HGH, Dr. Li pointed the way toward effective treatment of children dwarfed because of a defect in their pituitary glands. But he is well aware of the difficulties still ahead before such treatment will be practical. Other hormones can be extracted from lower animals and used to treat humans, but growth hormone from lower animals has no effect on human subjects. HGH that can be used on humans must be obtained from humans who have just died--a source that is not likely ever to meet the demand.

The difficulties of synthesizing the hormone promise to be immense; HGH, which contains 256 amino acids, is far more complex than ACTH. But Dr. Li is learning more about it with every experiment. Most recently, he injected HGH into a female monkey, causing her to give milk, even though she had not been pregnant. Now Dr. Li is convinced that the hormone does double duty, controlling not only human growth but almost certainly lactation as well.

* From 1946 through 1960, the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation, in cooperation with the American Pulbic Health Association, annually gave several awards of up to $5,000 each.

Now Samuel Broniman, Seagram's head, bankrolls the A.P.H.A.

awards, while the Lasker Foundation independently gives two of $10,000 each, one in basic medical and one in clinical research.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.