AXELROD, JULIUS

AXELROD, JULIUS (1912– ), U.S. biochemist, pharmacologist, and Nobel Prize laureate. Born in New York City, the son of Polish immigrants, he obtained his B.Sc. in 1933 from New York's City College, his M.A. in 1941 from New York University, and his Ph.D. in 1955 from George Washington University. In 1949 he joined the staff of the National Heart Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, and in 1954 he was invited to establish a pharmacology section and was appointed chief of the section, Laboratory of Clinical Science, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). In 1957 he began his most famous research project which focused on the activity of neurotransmitter   hormones. Axelrod specialized in the field of biochemical mechanisms, drug and hormone actions, and glandular research. His achievement was based on Euler's discovery of noradrenaline (norepinephrine), a chemical substance that transmits nerve impulses. Axelrod identified the mechanisms that regulate the formation of noradrenaline in nerve cells as well as the mechanisms in its inactivation. He discovered the enzyme that neutralizes noradrenaline by an enzyme, and named it catechol-o-methyl transferase. The enzyme was shown to be useful in dealing with the effects of certain psychotropic drugs and in research on hypertension and schizophrenia. Axelrod's work enabled researchers during the 1970s to develop a new class of antidepressant medication such as Prozac. Over the next 30 years, until his retirement in 1984, he worked on many research projects in pharmacology. He shared the 1970 Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine with the British biophysicist sir bernard katz and the Swedish physiologist Ulf von Euler. Axelrod remained an active scientist and researcher and distinguished lecturer throughout the 1970s. He was the recipient of many awards and a member of many editorials boards and committees of scientific journals. In 1984 he formally retired from NIMH and was named Scientist Emeritus of the National Institute of Health in 1996. (Gali Rotstein (2nd ed.)