Image via WikipediaEugene Goldwasser, Discoverer of EPO
Eugene Goldwasser, the University of Chicago biochemist whose agonizingly long but ultimately successful search for a single protein helped launch the biotechnology industry, died Friday in Chicago after a brief illness. He was 88.
The immediate cause of death was renal failure associated with advancing prostate cancer, which he’d lived with for over 20 years. When his kidneys began to fail shortly after Thanksgiving, Goldwasser opted for hospice care instead of dialysis, a procedure revolutionized by his discovery.
Goldwasser, whose government-funded research began as a Cold War experiment to cure radiation sickness, found and purified erythropoietin, or EPO, which is a naturally-occurring hormone produced by the kidneys to stimulate new red blood cell production. Today, genetically-engineered versions of EPO cure anemia in dialysis and cancer patients and generate billions of dollars in sales for Amgen, Johnson & Johnson and Roche.
Unlike its discoverer, EPO has generated numerous headlines over the years. Its high price, which like Goldwasser’s long quest is mostly paid by the government, has generated anger and intense lobbying on Capitol Hill and at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. It has been used illegally by athletes like Tour de France bicyclists to provide more energy by expanding oxygen-carrying capacity. And, more recently, regulators have issued warnings against EPO overuse after clinical trials showed overdosing raises the risk of heart attacks and strokes in chronic kidney disease patients and premature death in cancer patients.
But none of that was foreseen by Goldwasser when he decided in 1980 to provide California-based Applied Molecular Genetics, later Amgen, with the world’s sole supply of purified EPO, which it had taken him nearly a quarter century to find. Though he disclosed his findings to the University of Chicago as required by his federal funders, the university never patented the discovery.
That decision allowed Amgen scientists to identify the gene that produced EPO, patent its use, and manufacture the protein using the then new technology of recombinant engineering. The company also financed the clinical trials in dialysis patients that led to Food and Drug Administration approval of the first EPO product – Epogen – in 1989.
But as far as Goldwasser’s long search for EPO that predated those efforts, “private companies rarely support that kind of research. It takes too long, and the odds of success are even longer,” I wrote in 2004 in “The $800 Million Pill,” whose first chapter documented the biochemist’s quest. “The Goldwasser-Amgen story provides an excellent opening snapshot of the complicated relationship between basic and applied research in the public and private sectors and shows how private firms rely on public research to come up with important new drugs.”Read more »
But as far as Goldwasser’s long search for EPO that predated those efforts, “private companies rarely support that kind of research. It takes too long, and the odds of success are even longer,” I wrote in 2004 in “The $800 Million Pill,” whose first chapter documented the biochemist’s quest. “The Goldwasser-Amgen story provides an excellent opening snapshot of the complicated relationship between basic and applied research in the public and private sectors and shows how private firms rely on public research to come up with important new drugs.”Read more »
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