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Yellapragada Subbarao (January 12, 1895-August 9, 1948) was an Indian scientist who made important contributions to the treatment of cancer. Most of his career was spent in the United States. Subbarao remained an alien without a green card all his life, though he would lead some of America's most important medical research during World War II.
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Early life and education
He was born to a poor family in Bhimavaram of the Old Madras Presidency, now in West Godavary Department, Andhra Pradesh. He passed through a traumatic period in his schooling at Rajahmundry (due to the premature death of close relations by disease) and eventually matriculated in his third attempt from the Hindu High School, Madras. He passed the Intermediate Examination from the Presidency College and entered the Madras Medical College where his education was supported by friends and Kasturi Suryanarayana Murthy, whose daughter he later married. Following Gandhiji's call to boycott British goods he started wearing khadi surgical dress; this incurred the displeasure of M. C. Bradfield, his surgery professor. Consequently, though he did well in his written papers, he was awarded the lesser LMS certificate and not a full MBBS degree.
Subbarow tried to enter the Madras Medical Service without success. He then took up a job as Lecturer in Anatomy at Dr. Lakshmipathi's Ayurvedic College at Madras. He was fascinated by the healing powers of Ayurvedic medicines and began to engage in research to put Ayurveda on a modern footing.
A chance meeting with an American doctor, who was visiting on a Rockefeller Scholarship, changed his mind. The promise of support from Satyalinga Naicker Charities and Malladi Charities, Kakinada and financial assistance raised by his father-in-law, enabled Subbarao to proceed to the U.S. He arrived in Boston on October 26.
Career in America
After earning a diploma from the Harvard School of Tropical Medicine he joined Harvard as a junior faculty member. With Cyrus Fiske, he developed a method for the estimation of phosphorus in body fluids and tissues. He discovered the role of Phosphocreatine and Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) in muscular activity, which earned him an entry into biochemistry textbooks in the 1930s. He obtained his Ph.D. degree the same year.
He joined Lederle Laboratories, a division of American Cyanamid (now a division of Wyeth), after he was denied a regular faculty position at Harvard. At Lederle, he developed a method to synthesize Folic Acid, Vitamin B9,1 based on work by Lucy Wills to isolate folic acid as a ward against anemia. After his work on folic acid and with considerable inputs from Dr. Sidney Farber, he developed the important anti-cancer drug Methotrexate- one of the very first cancer chemotherapy agents and still in widespread clinical use.234 He also discovered the drug Hetrazan which was used by the World health Organization against filariasis.5 Under Subbarao, Benjamin Duggar made his discovery of the world's first tetracycline antibiotic, Aureomycin, in 1945. This discovery was made as a result of the largest distributed scientific experiment ever performed to that date, when American soldiers who had fought all over the world were instructed at the end of WWII to collect soil samples from wherever they were, and bring the samples back for screening at Lederle Laboratories for possible anti-bacterial agents from natural soil fungae.67
Recognition and delayed acknowledgement
Subbaro's memory has been obscured by the achievements of others and his failure to promote his own self-interest. Part of the reason for his obscurity was that Subbarao did not "market his work". A patent attorney was once astonished to find that he had not taken any of the steps that scientists everywhere consider routine for linking their name to their handiwork.citation needed He was invariably in the audience when a colleague or a collaborator, pushed by him to the limelight, took the bow as each fruit of research directed by Subbarao was revealed to the public. He never granted interviews to the press. He never made the rounds of the academies which apportion accolades among the achievers. He never went on lecture tours.
His colleague, George Hitchings, who shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Gertrude Elion, said, "Some of the nucleotides isolated by Subbarao had to be rediscovered years later by other workers because Fiske, apparently out of jealousy, did not let Subbarao's contributions see the light of the day."8
A new fungus was named in his honor by American Cynamid: Subbaromyces splendens.9
References
- ^ Farber S et al., "The Action of Pteroylglutamic Conjugates on Man", Science, 1947 Dec 19;106(2764):619-621; PMID 17831847
- ^ Farber et al.'s article, published in the New England Journal of Medicne in 1946, noted Dr SubbaRow's work as a foundation for this landmark paper. The paper remains one of the earliest, top-cited research articles and is a classics in the field of medicine.
- ^ A tribute to Sidney Farber-- the father of modern chemotherapy Br J Haematol. 2006 Jul;134(1):20-6 PMID 16803563
- ^ Diamond, L.K. (1985) This week’s citation classicCurrent Contents
- ^ WHO Report on Global Filaria Control 2002
- ^ History of Medicine: Dr. Yellapragada SubbaRow (1895-1948) - He Transformed Science; Changed Lives
- ^ Journal of the Indian Academy of Clinical Medicine; 2 (1,2) Jan.-Jun. 2001
- ^ Press article, The Hindu 13-mar-2003
- ^ Taxon ID 50474
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- This page was last modified on 17 October 2008, at 17:44.
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