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| Serge
Lissitzky (1919-1986) |
 Serge
Lissitzky was 67 years old when he died in 1986. He was born in
1919 in Bourg-en-Bresse (France). His life has been 2nd ETA Meeting-Marseille
1967 largely devoted to medical biology and biochemistry, to teaching
and to research and above all, to thyroid research.
After brilliant high-school studies and one year spent at the University
of Sciences in Paris, he joined the French Navy Medical School in
Bordeaux just a few months before the beginning of World War II.
After the defeat and the invasion of France by the German army in
1940, the Navy Medical School moved to Montpellier under the Vichy
administration. In 1943 when the Germans invaded Vichy (France),
the school was disbanded and he escaped through Spain to join the
Free French Forces in Northern Africa. Incorporated as a medical
officer in the French First Army, he participated in the Allies'
landing in Provence (1944) and in the campaign in Germany (1945).
After the armistice, he served in Vietnam before returning to France
in 1946. During all these events, he was twice confronted with heavy
fighting during the Rhine and Danube battles and once in Vietnam
where from the banks of the Red river near Haïphong, the Chinese
army unexpectedly fired at the warship on which he was on duty.
His medical and strategic skills to organize the assistance for
wounded soldiers during these tragic events were rewarded by several
military citations (War Cross and Légion d'Honneur). The acquaintances
made among the military doctors remained among his closest friends.
He responsibly performed his military duties but the vocation of
Serge Lissitzky was to get involved in biological chemistry. Indeed
in the pre-war period, he succeeded passing several scientific degrees
at the University of Paris and got his PhD in 1952(1).
Serge Lissitzky quickly orientated himself to research in 1949 after
joining Prof. J. Roche at the "Laboratoire de Biochimie Générale
et Comparée " in the Collège de France in Paris. In cooperation
with Jean Roche and Raymond Michel, he investigated iodine metabolism
in the thyroid gland with new developing techniques, particularly
radiochromatography with radioiodine 131I as a tracer.
An intensive work yielded several breakthroughs in thyroid biochemistry,
namely (a) the discovery of a thyroid iodotyrosine-desiodase and
the development of the concept of iodine re-cycling within the thyroid
gland(2), (b) the discovery of l-triodothyronine at the
same time as Jack Gross and Rosalind Pitt-Rivers in London(3,4)
and © the demonstration that thyroxine and triiodothyronine were
part of the thyroglobulin molecule and were secreted after the proteolysis
of thyroglobulin(5). In 1953 and after 3 years spent
in Roche's laboratory, Serge Lissitzky moved to Algiers and worked
as a physician at the Maillot military hospital and taught as Professor
at the University. It is important to mention that during the same
period he developed a new field of research with Dr F Miranda, succeeding
in the isolation and the characterization of scorpion toxins which
became of the highest importance for neurobiological studies(6,7).
The milestones of Lissitzky's future work were thus planted in his
mind when he moved to the Medical School of the University of Marseille
in 1954 after being nominated there as Professor of Biochemistry.
In 1960, he became Head of the Department of Biochemistry. He rapidly
expanded his research in thyroid hormone metabolism, mainly the
deiodination of iodothyronines by the peripheral tissues. This work
was done in connection with Rosalind Pitt-Rivers and Jamshed Tata
in London, John Stanbury and Sidney Ingbar in the US, Jacques Nunez
in Roche's laboratory and in association for a time with Aldo Pinchera
(Pisa).
In 1962, the emergence of new separation techniques led him to return
to studies on thyroglobulin in order to gain a better knowledge
of the formation and the production of thyroid hormones. This became
a life-long pursuit for him and in the continuity of the laboratory
of biochemistry in Marseille where thyroglobulin had been previously
purified by Yves Derrien, Raymond Michel and Jean Roche in 1948.
The research studies progressively shifted from the biological chemistry
of iodocompounds to the cellular and molecular biochemistry of an
integrated endocrine gland: the thyroid gland.
Lissitzky headed a research unit in his laboratory entitled "Physiopathologie
de la fonction thyroïdienne", rapidly supported by the CNRS
and INSERM. Several teams of researchers including P. Carayon, Y.
Malthiery, J. Mauchamp , M. Rolland, J. Ruf and J. Torresani were
therein involved in the purification, the biochemical and immunological
characterisation of thyroglobulin, the setting of in vitro
organomimetic cellular models for the study of the thyroid function
and of the thyrotropin receptor and its transduction pathways, the
study of thyroid hormone action and the molecular cloning of thyroglobulin.
At the time, thyroglobulin was the hub of many networks he established
in France and farther. Several senior scientists came to his laboratory
for some months and became his friends such as Salvatore, Greif,
Greer, Becarevic, Gorbman, Burrow and DeGroot. There were also connections
with the Clinical Endocrinology Branch at the National Institutes
of Health (Bethesda, US), with some European groups as the Naples
group with Nino Salvatore and Roberto Di Lauro, the Brussels group
with Jacques Dumont and Gilbert Vassart and the Amsterdam group
with Jan de Viljder. Serge Lissitzky was also concerned to bring
new insights into different thyroid pathologies as in congenital
goiters resulting from an impaired thyroglobulin synthesis, in Graves
disease, in autoimmune thyroid diseases or in thyroid cancers for
which early developments of in situ hybridization were used to show
a correlation between differentiation and thyroglobulin gene transcription.
While remaining very much involved in thyroid research, Serge Lissitzky's
laboratory continued to pursue the work initiated in Algiers, aiming
at the isolation and characterization of the neurotoxins present
in the venom of the Androctonus australis Hector scorpion. The effect
of the venom on the Na+ and K+ ion channels was demonstrated. In
the late '70s, F. Miranda and H. Rochat expanded this research and
developed an important research unit devoted to the study of animal
toxins.
In 1970, Serge Lissitzky opened a new unit in charge of the measurement
of proteic hormones, essentially by radioimmunological procedures
in his department. Serum hormonal levels were measured for patients.
At the same time, monoclonal antibodies of thyroglobulin and thyroperoxidase
were produced. Endocrinological studies were also performed on the
hormonal regulation of the normal and adenomatous pituitary.
All these studies resulted in over 300 publications. They led him
to participate in numerous national and international scientific
societies. Lissitzky chaired the French Societé de Chimie Biologique
and Société d'Endocrinologie. He was elected a member of the
French Académie de Médecine and was awarded by the Académie of
Sciences. He also belonged to several international societies
such as the British Biochemical Society, the European Molecular
Organization (EMBO), the American Thyroid Association (ATA) and
of course to the European Thyroid Association (ETA) of which he
has been a founding member and an Executive Committee member. Lissitzky
welcomed the second ETA meeting in Marseille in 1968. He was awarded
the ETA Ames prize in 1983 and lectured on "Thyroglobulin entering
into Molecular Biology" (8) . He acceded to the position
of honorary member of the ETA joining Ros Pitt-Rivers, Jean Roche
and Jack Gross, all involved as himself in T3 discovery.
 During
his life, Serge Lissizky has been an envisioned scientist guided
by a bright and creative intelligence associated to a deep scientific
curiosity and a communicative enthusiasm, all of which gave him
a great charisma. His attractive character and his renown allowed
his department to rapidly expand and split in many research groups.
His personality was very convivial and playful, enjoying life with
humour. In the laboratory, he was a hard worker and his authority,
sometimes coloured by a military taint, was respected because he
was as rigorous for himself as for the others. Despite his numerous
administrative tasks and responsibilities, he remained unpretentious
and available to everyone for thought-provoking discussions and
"think-tank" meetings.
P. Carayon1, J-Cl. Lissitzky1, J. Torresani1
& C. Beckers2
1 Marseille University Medical School (France)
2 University of Louvain Medical School (UCL, Belgium)
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| 1 |
Lissitzky S.F., "Biochimie des acides aminés iodés marqués par I131 dans le corps thyroïde", PhD thesis submitted at the Faculté des Sciences de l'Université de Paris (1952). |
| 2 |
Roche J., Michel O., Michel R., Gorbman A., Lissitzky S. The enzymatic dehalogenation of halogenated tyrosine derivatives by the thyroid gland and its physiological role. II. Biochim Biophys Acta. 1953, (Dec.12)4:570-6 |
| 3 |
Roche J., Lissitzky S., Michel R., Sur la triiothyronine, produit intermédiaire de la transformation de la diiodothyronine en thyroxine. C. R. Acad. Sci., Paris, 1952 (25 Fév.), 234 : 997-998. |
| 4 |
Gross J., Pitt-Rivers R., The indentification of 3,5,3'-L-triiodothyronine in human plasma. The Lancet 1952 (March 1) i : 439-441. |
| 5 |
Roche J., Lissitzky S., Michel R., Sur la présence de la triodothyronine dans la thyroglobuline. C.R.Acad. Sci., Paris, 1952, (10 mars) 234 :1228-1230. |
| 6 |
Miranda F., Lissitzky S., Purification of the toxin of scorpion venom (Androctonus australis L.). Biochem Biophys Acta, 1958, 30 : 217-218. |
| 7 |
Miranda F., Lissitzky S., Scorpamins : the toxic proteins from scorpion venom. Nature (London), 1961,190 : 443-444. |
| 8 |
Lissitzky S.,
Ames-Miles Prize lecture of the European Thyroid Association (1983),
"Thyroglobulin entering into Molecular Biology". Europ. J. Clin. Invest.
1983, 7 : 65-76 |
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