Charles L. Mayer Prize of the U.S. National Science Fund: Dr. Alexander Lipschütz

Abstract

DR. ALEXANDER LIPSCHÜTZ, director of the Department of Experimental Medicine of the Chilean National Health Service at Santiago, Chile, has been awarded the second 2,000 dollars prize given by Dr. Charles L. Mayer and administered by the National Science Fund of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. The award was offered for an outstanding contribution made in 1943 to present-day knowledge of factors affecting the growth of animal cells with particular reference to human cancer. Dr. Lipschiitz was born in Riga, where he received his early education. He occupied various positions in medicine and physiology at institutions in Switzerland and Germany before going to Chile about fifteen years ago to work at the Catholic University at Concepcion. Since 1938 he has been director of the Department of Experimental Medicine of the National Health Service at Santiago, Chile. Throughout the past six years Dr. Lipschiitz, with Chilean collaborators, has studied the fibromyomas of the uterus which can be induced in guinea pigs by the injection of certain sex hormones of the female. The growths closely resemble the fibromyomas ('fibroids') which occur in women during the childbearing period, and Dr. Lipschütz has shown that, like these, they dwindle and vanish when the stimulation of the sex hormones is withdrawn, as happens after the menopause in women. He and his associates have sought means to prevent the occurrence and enlargement of the growths while the hormones are still acting, and recently they have found that some other hormones have this effect, as do also certain synthetic substances. The molecular configurations responsible for the influence of the antifibromatogenic agents are now under investigation; a progress report by Dr. Lipschiitz was published in NATURE of February 26, 1944, p. 260.