- Person
- Paul Ehrlich
- Lived
- 1854–1915
- Field
- Immunology & chemotherapy
- From
- German
The story
In the late nineteenth century diphtheria was a common killer of children. At Robert Koch's Institute for Infectious Diseases in Berlin, Emil von Behring had been working until 1893 on a serum against diphtheria and tetanus, but with inconsistent results. Serum from immunised animals contained an antitoxin that could neutralise the diphtheria poison, yet batches varied enormously in strength.
Koch suggested that Behring and Paul Ehrlich work together. Drawing on his experiments with mice, Ehrlich was quickly able to raise the level of immunity in the laboratory animals. Clinical tests early in 1894 were successful, and in August the chemical company Hoechst began marketing the remedy under both their names.
Because antiserums were an entirely new type of medicine, Germany set up a state system to guarantee their quality. From 1 April 1895 only government-approved serum could be sold, and in 1896 a new Institute for Serum Research and Testing opened in Berlin-Steglitz with Ehrlich as its director. He discovered that the diphtheria toxin used for testing was perishable, so he used a stable dried serum as the fixed reference instead. Each test toxin was calibrated against this standard, and then used to measure new serums: toxin and serum were mixed and injected into a guinea pig, with the timing of the animal's death giving a clear-cut result. Ehrlich claimed this made the measurement as accurate as a chemical titration. He also showed that the reaction between toxin and antitoxin speeds up with heat and slows with cold, like other chemical reactions.
His methods were copied by government serum institutes around the world, which obtained their standard serum from his institute after it moved to Frankfurt in 1899. Serums against tetanus and other diseases, tuberculin and later vaccines were tested the same way.
His Nobel biography states that the methods he established formed the basis of all future standardisation of serums. Antitoxin made from horse serum is still given to people with severe diphtheria, and the agency that grew from Ehrlich's institute, today's Paul Ehrlich Institute, continues to test and approve vaccines and biological medicines.
Why it matters
Standardised antitoxin saved countless children from diphtheria, and Ehrlich's principle of testing every batch against a reference is still how vaccines and biological drugs are regulated today.
About Paul Ehrlich
Nobel-winning German Jewish physician who imagined the “magic bullet”, founded chemotherapy and, with Salvarsan in 1909, produced the first effective drug against syphilis.
More about Paul Ehrlich
- Paul Ehrlich named and characterised the mast cellWhile still a young scientist, Paul Ehrlich named and characterised the mast cell, the immune cell now known to drive allergic reactions.
- Paul Ehrlich's maxim is the first rule of drug designPaul Ehrlich summed up a basic law of pharmacology in four Latin words, corpora non agunt nisi fixata: a drug acts only when it is bound to its target.
- Paul Ehrlich's dyes revealed the blood-brain barrierPaul Ehrlich noticed that dyes injected into the bloodstream coloured nearly every organ except the brain, an early clue to the blood-brain barrier that protects our nervous system.
- Paul Ehrlich's dyes founded modern haematologyUsing the new synthetic dyes of the 1870s and 1880s, Paul Ehrlich learned to tell the different kinds of white blood cells apart, laying the foundations of modern blood science.
- Paul Ehrlich improved the tuberculosis test overnightThe day after Robert Koch announced the tuberculosis bacterium in March 1882, Paul Ehrlich improved Koch's method of staining it, making the deadly germ far easier to detect.
- Paul Ehrlich's "magic bullet" cured syphilisPaul Ehrlich imagined a "magic bullet" that would strike disease without harming the patient, and in 1909 his lab found Salvarsan, the first modern antimicrobial drug and first cure for syphilis.
- Paul Ehrlich treated malaria with a synthetic dyeNoticing that malaria parasites soak up methylene blue, Paul Ehrlich tried the dye as a treatment, and two patients' fevers subsided, an early step toward designed synthetic drugs.
- Paul Ehrlich foresaw antibodies and receptorsPaul Ehrlich's side-chain theory proposed that cells carry receptors that bind specific toxins, an idea about antibodies that helped earn him the 1908 Nobel Prize.
- Paul Ehrlich’s trypan red opened the attack on trypanosomesScreening over 100 dyes in Frankfurt, Paul Ehrlich’s team found trypan red, which killed trypanosomes in infected animals, an early chemotherapy victory that led to arsenic drugs.
Sources
- Paul Ehrlich Wikipedia
- Paul Ehrlich, Biographical NobelPrize.org
- Diphtheria Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.