Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

In Memoriam

2009; Elsevier BV; Volume: 47; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.yjmcc.2009.06.022

1095-8584

Robert B. Jennings,

Cardiovascular Issues in Pregnancy

Howard E. Morgan, one of the leading experimental cardiologists of the 20th century, died after a brief illness on March 2, 2009 in Estero, Florida. He died of complications of a fall which occurred while he was receiving coumadin therapy for atrial fibrillation. Howard is survived by his wife Donna and a daughter Patricia Morgan Wehler of East Berlin Pa. as well as two grandsons, Jonathan and Geoffrey Morgan of Ann Arbor Michigan. Howard was born in Bloomington, Illinois on October 8, 1927 and was in high school at the time the United States entered World War II. He accelerated his college education by taking some college courses while still in high school followed by one year at Illinois Wesleyan University (1944–45). In 1945, he entered Johns Hopkins Medical School. His MD was awarded in 1949 at the age of 21 and he began a career in obstetrics and gynecology on the house staff of the Hospital of Vanderbilt University Medical School. He completed training in this discipline in 1953 and was appointed an instructor in this department in 1953–54. His research training began in 1954 when he became a fellow in medical research in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute established in the Department of Physiology at Vanderbilt. A year later, as a consequence of the doctor draft, he entered the Army as a Medical Officer. He spent the next two years as Assistant Chief of the OB GYNE Service of the US Army Station Hospital at Fort Campbell Kentucky. As you would expect, he was a good physician and remarked that in those days of no cell phones and pagers that “the only way I could get away from the ladies in my practice was to play golf”. He enjoyed the game but did not have much time to play it after he returned to academic work following his discharge from the army. At the completion of his military duty in 1959, he returned to the Physiology Department at Vanderbilt as an Investigator of the Hughes Institute and rose through the ranks to Professor of Physiology in 1966. To quote Howard “Because I entered physiological research after eight years of clinical training, research and practice in obstetrics and gynecology, my training was entirely as a post doctoral fellow. Charles R. Park served as my preceptor and guided me into studies of the effects of insulin in glucose uptake and sugar transport. With a solid background obtained in Parks laboratory, I later was able to undertake new areas of investigation that have characterized the remainder of my career.” He also spent 1960–61 on a sabbatical in the Department of Biochemistry of Cambridge University where he worked with P. J. Randle on glucose metabolism and transport. In 1964 he developed a kinetic model of sugar transport in rabbit erythrocytes that has been used by many investigators studying transport phenomena [[1]Regan D.M. Morgan H.E. Studies of the glucose transport system in the rabbit erythrocyte.Biochim. Biophys. Acta. 1964; 79: 151-166PubMed Google Scholar]. He also studied glycogen metabolism and showed the role of 5′AMP in activating phosphorylase b and the fact that both ATP and G6P inhibited the active form of phosphorylase. This allosteric control mechanism was important in differentiating the effects of anoxia from those of glucagon and in accounting for acceleration of glycogen utilization in the ischemic heart. Much of the work he did in the 60s was based on the isolated perfused working rat heart model that he developed to study the metabolism of protein, carbohydrate and fat and the factors controlling metabolism of these substrates [[2]Neely J.R. Liebermaster H. Morgan H.E. Effects of pressure development on membrane transport of glucose in the isolated rabbit heart.Am. J. Physiol. 1967; 212: 815-822Crossref PubMed Scopus (99) Google Scholar]. This model has been used by many investigators since that time and still is widely used. Later, this technique was modified with Bob Neely to allow the study of ischemia. He established that mechanical performance, filling pressure, cardiac output, and O2 consumption all correlated with faster utilization of oxidative substrates [[3]Neely J.R. Morgan H.E. Relationship between carbohydrate and lipid metabolism and the energy balance of heart muscle.Ann. Rev. Physiol. 1974; 36: 413-459Crossref PubMed Scopus (1002) Google Scholar]. When he began these studies in the late 50s, oxidative phosphorylation and mitochondrial respiration were just beginning to be understood. It was a very exciting time for biochemistry and metabolism in a general sense, but cardiac metabolism was not a popular topic. I first met Howard at a meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology in Atlantic City in about 1965. We used to go to hear each other's papers, his in the physiology section and mine in experimental pathology. We soon became friends. The ruling subspecialties in cardiac pathophysiology were hemodynamics and electrocardiography. There were numerous sessions on these topics and very few involving metabolism. Thus, one had to go fairly far afield to hear papers of interest. In 1967, he became professor and Chairman of the Department of Physiology at the new Hershey Medical School in Hershey Pennsylvania. He recruited an excellent department and brought two scientists with him from Vanderbilt, both of whom prospered at Hershey. J.R. Neely and Jim Jefferson. Bob Neely was a close collaborator, especially in studies of metabolism of ischemic tissue. After 20 very successful years as the Evan Pugh and J. Lloyd Huck Professor and Chairman of the Department of Physiology of Hershey Medical School which, in the 1980s, had become a school of Penn State University, he resigned (1987) to take on a new challenge as the senior vice president for Research and Charles B. Degenstein Distinguished Scientist at the Geisinger Clinic in Danville, Pa. His first love was research and the availability of funds to create a new research institute (The Weis Center for Research) at this clinic provided him with an opportunity to create an institution where first class basic research on the cardiovascular system could be performed in a well funded supportive environment. He retired as director of the Weis Center for Research on June 30, 1998, after 10 years on the job. While there, he continued to pursue the major research interest of the last 20 years of his life, which was the identification of factors that control the growth of the heart. In the process, he became a leader in a new field, that of applying the techniques of molecular biology to the study of cardiac function in health and disease. His aim was to learn the mechanisms involved in the development of cardiac hypertrophy. This involved the development of methods to measure both the synthesis and degradation of proteins in the heart, processes that proved to be difficult to measure in the adult heart. However, he and his coworkers developed good methods [[4]Morgan H.E. Chua B.a.l.v.i.n.H.L. Russo L. Fozzard H.A. Haber E. Jennings R.B. Katz A.M. Morgan H.E. Second Edition. Protein Synthesis and Degradation in the Heart and Cardiovascular System. Vol. 2. Raven Press, New York1992: 1505-1524Google Scholar]. With respect to synthesis, the rate limiting step in the isolated perfused heart was found to be initiation of peptide chains. Initiation was accelerated by fatty acids, insulin, leucine, and increased cardiac work and was directly related to an increase in cardiac RNA. Howard rose to leadership positions in numerous societies. His involvement with the International Society of Heart Research (ISHR) began in the early 1970s when he helped me write a draft of the By-Laws of this Society. These were approved in 1976 and have served the Society well since that time. He was President of the American Section of this Society from 1979 to 1982 and served as president of the ISHR from 1980 to 1983. He also was very active in the American Heart Association (AHA) where he was on the Research Committee and served as vice president for research and Chairman of the Research Committee in 1977–78. Finally, he served as president of the AHA in 1987–1988. The NIH also used his skills extensively. He was a member of the Metabolism Study Section from 1967 to 1971, the Cardiology Advisory Committee from 1975 to 1978, and on the Advisory Council of the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute from 1979 to 1983. Finally, in 1985–86, he was President of the American Physiological Society (APS) and in 1996, he was the first President of the International Academy of Cardiovascular Sciences. Morgan was editor of several important cardiovascular Journals including the American Journal of Physiology, Cell Physiology Section (1981–84), Physiological Reviews (1973–78), and the Annual Review of Physiology (1986–92). He also served on the editorial Boards of numerous journals including Circulation Research, Journal of Biological Chemistry, J. Cardiovascular Pharmacology, J. Molecular and Cellular Cardiology, Cardioscience Journal, and the Canadian Journal of Cardiology. During the course of his career, he received numerous honors including election to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He has received the Award of Merit, the Distinguished Achievement Award and the Gold Heart Award of the AHA, the Peter Harris Award for Outstanding Research of the ISHR, the Carl J. Wiggers and Ray G. Daggs Award of the American Physiology Society and the Medal of Merit for Outstanding Achievements in Cardiovascular Education and Research of the International Academy of Cardiovascular Sciences (2008). He has been cited for distinguished service by the American Society of Biological Chemists and has been named a Hughes Scholar by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. After his retirement from the Weis Institute, he became an important consultant to the Reynolds Foundation, Whitaker Foundation, and the Burgher Foundation and was instrumental in developing several of the programs supported by these foundations. As for the man, he had an excellent sense of humor and enjoyed life. Although humble, he did not tolerate fools. When it came to assessing data and designing experiments, he was a quick study. He trained many graduate students and post doctoral fellows who have gone on to have very successful careers. Michael Rovetto of the University of Missouri and Gene Rannels of Hershey are representative of this group. He also had numerous foreign post-doctoral fellows such as Ake Hjalmarson of Sweden, who have gone on to have distinguished careers. His staff was loyal to him and liked him very much. He worked very efficiently and published over 200 papers, several of which were citation classics. His wife Donna of some 21 years was very supportive of his efforts and they had a happy life together in the Lewisburg area near the Geisinger Clinic. He had visual difficulties in the last years of his life that slowed him up but did not stop him. He remained bright and alert until the end. Experimental cardiology has lost a great leader. He will be missed.