Leo Sachs (
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
: ליאו זקס; 14 October 1924 – 12 December 2013) was a German-born Israeli molecular biologist and cancer researcher. Born in
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...
, he emigrated to the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
in 1933, and to Israel in 1952. There he joined the
Weizmann Institute of Science
The Weizmann Institute of Science ( he, מכון ויצמן למדע ''Machon Vaitzman LeMada'') is a public research university in Rehovot, Israel, established in 1934, 14 years before the State of Israel. It differs from other Israeli unive ...
.
Biography
Leo Sachs moved to Britain with his family in 1933 following Hitler's rise to power. In 1952 he received a BSc from the
University of Wales in Bangor. His original dream was to help establish a kibbutz in Palestine, and he even spent two years as a farm laborer, milking cows. But the doors to Palestine were virtually closed by the British, so Sachs began studying agricultural botany at the University of Wales, became fascinated along the way by genetics and development, and ended up completing a PhD in genetics in 1951 at Cambridge University.
Upon
moving to Israel, he began to contribute to the fledgling country in the way he knew best – as a geneticist at the Weizmann Institute. Because there were no animal studies yet at the Institute, Sachs started working on a theory that human amniotic fluid, which bathes the baby in the womb, contains fetal cells that provide information about the fetus. His research proved him right, showing that these cells can be used to determine the baby's gender and other important genetic properties. Sachs's research formed the basis for amniocentesis, the widely used prenatal diagnosis of human diseases.
Eventually, Sachs secured his own laboratory and a supply of mice and began working on a question that would anchor his research throughout: What controls normal development and what happens when development goes wrong? Why does the machinery in cancer cells run amok, causing abnormal proliferation? Focusing on blood stem cells, a small group of bone marrow cells that produce some 200 billion new blood cells every day, Sachs ended up, in 1963, designing the first cell culture system able to grow, clone, and induce the development of different types of normal blood cells. Using this process, he subsequently discovered and identified a family of proteins that plays a key role in controlling normal blood cell development. Later named colony stimulating factors (CSF) and interleukins, one of these CSF proteins is now used worldwide in a variety of clinical procedures, including boosting the production of infection-fighting white blood cells in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy or radiation, and improving the success of bone marrow and peripheral blood cell transplants.
Sachs also demonstrated, for the first time, that malignancy can be reversed. He showed that the proteins he had identified, along with some other compounds, set leukemic cells back on the right track – inducing them to differentiate into normal-behaving mature cells. This approach, using retinoic acid combined with chemotherapy, is now standard procedure in treating human promyelocytic leukemia, and it has greatly increased survival rates.
At the Weizmann Institute, he established a section on genetics and virology and for 27 years, from 1962 to 1989, served as Head of the Institute's Genetics Department. In addition, between 1974 and 1979 he served as Dean of Weizmann's Biology Faculty.
Awards and honours
* In 1965, he was elected Member of the
European Molecular Biology Organisation
The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) is a professional, non-profit organization of more than 1,800 life scientists. Its goal is to promote research in life science and enable international exchange between scientists. It co-funds cour ...
;
* In 1972, Sachs was awarded the
Israel Prize
The Israel Prize ( he, פרס ישראל; ''pras israél'') is an award bestowed by the State of Israel, and regarded as the state's highest cultural honor.
History
The Israel Prize is awarded annually, on Israeli Independence Day, in a state cer ...
, for natural sciences
* In 1975 he was elected Member,
Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, based in Jerusalem, was established in 1961 by the State of Israel to foster contact between Israeli scholars in the sciences and humanities and create a think tank for advising the government on re ...
;
* In 1977 Sachs was awarded the Rothschild Prize in the Biological Sciences;
* In 1980, he was awarded the
Wolf Prize in Medicine
The Wolf Prize in Medicine is awarded annually by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture, Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics and Arts. The P ...
, becoming the first Israeli scientist to win the
Wolf Prize
The Wolf Prize is an international award granted in Israel, that has been presented most years since 1978 to living scientists and artists for ''"achievements in the interest of mankind and friendly relations among people ... irrespective of natio ...
; for his "contributions to knowledge of the function and dysfunction of the body cells through
isstudies on ... the elucidation of mechanisms governing the control and differentiation of normal and cancer cells".
* In 1983 Sachs was awarded the
Bristol-Myers Squibb Award
Between 1977 and 2006, the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation presented annual awards of US$50,000 to scientists for distinguished achievements in fields such as cancer, infectious disease, neuroscience, nutrition, and cardiovascular disease. The rec ...
for Distinguished Achievement in Cancer Research, New York;
* In 1985 he was elected Doctor Honoris Causa, Bordeaux University, France;
* In 1986 Sachs was awarded The Royal Society
Wellcome Foundation
The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1936 with legacies from the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome (founder of one of the predecessors of Glax ...
Prize, London;
* In 1989 Sachs was awarded the
Alfred P. Sloan Prize, General Motors Cancer Research Foundation, New York;
* In 1995, he was also elected as a Foreign Associate to the U.S.
National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
(NAS).
* In 1996, Sachs received the Ot Hanagid (Medal of the Governor) award, presented annually by Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek Medical Center, for his pioneering work in cancer research. The presentation noted that "He discovered and identified a group of
proteins
Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, respo ...
among them
colony-stimulating factor
Colony-stimulating factors (CSFs) are secreted glycoproteins that bind to receptor proteins on the surfaces of hemopoietic stem cells, thereby activating intracellular signaling pathways that can cause the cells to proliferate and differentia ...
s and some
interleukin
Interleukins (ILs) are a group of cytokines (secreted proteins and signal molecules) that are expressed and secreted by white blood cells (leukocytes) as well as some other body cells. The human genome encodes more than 50 interleukins and related ...
s that control the viability and growth of blood
stem cell
In multicellular organisms, stem cells are undifferentiated or partially differentiated cells that can differentiate into various types of cells and proliferate indefinitely to produce more of the same stem cell. They are the earliest type o ...
s and their development into different types of mature blood cells." It noted further that his "research in the 1950s on the use of
amniotic fluid
The amniotic fluid is the protective liquid contained by the amniotic sac of a gravid amniote. This fluid serves as a cushion for the growing fetus, but also serves to facilitate the exchange of nutrients, water, and biochemical products betwee ...
to diagnose a fetus s genetic properties has formed the basis for today's
prenatal diagnosis
Prenatal testing consists of prenatal screening and prenatal diagnosis, which are aspects of prenatal care that focus on detecting problems with the pregnancy as early as possible. These may be anatomic and physiologic problems with the health of ...
of human diseases."
* In 1997 he was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society
Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...
* In 1998, he was elected Foreign Member,
Academia Europaea
The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of Humanities, Letters, Law, and Sciences.
The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europea ...
;
* In 1999, he was elected Member Honorary Fellow, University of Wales, Bangor;
* In 2000, he was elected Ham-Wasserman Lecture, American Society of Hematology, San Francisco;
* In 2001, he was awarded Honorary Life Membership Award, International Cytokine Society;
* In 2002, he was awarded Emet Prize for Life Sciences, Medicine and Genetics
See also
*
List of Israel Prize recipients
This is a complete list of recipients of the Israel Prize from the inception of the Prize in 1953 through to 2022.
List
For each year, the recipients are, in most instances, listed in the order in which they appear on the official Israel Prize ...
References
External links
Faculty HomepageSachs on NAS websiteShaare Zedek Honors Weizmann Institute's Prof. Leo Sachs
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sachs, Leo
1924 births
2013 deaths
Alumni of Bangor University
Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences
German emigrants to the United Kingdom
British emigrants to Israel
Israel Prize in life sciences recipients who were biologists
EMET Prize recipients in the Life Sciences
Israeli biologists
Israeli geneticists
Israeli Jews
Israeli people of German-Jewish descent
Jewish scientists
Molecular biologists
Wolf Prize in Medicine laureates
Weizmann Institute of Science faculty
Fellows of the Royal Society
Members of Academia Europaea
Members of the European Molecular Biology Organization
Members of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities