Alex Karczmar
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Alex Karczmar | |
|---|---|
 Alex Karczmar in 2016 | |
| Born | May 9, 1917 |
| Died | August 17, 2017 (aged 100) |
Alexander George Karczmar (May 9, 1917 – August 17, 2017[1][2]) was a Polish-American neuroscientist and academic. He was professor and chairman of the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at Loyola University Medical Center from 1956 to 1986, and director of its Institute for Mind, Drugs, and Behavior.[3]
His research focused on the cholinergic system, investigating its autonomic and central functions, as well as its role in various human and animal behaviors. Beginning in the 1970s, he also delved into the concept of the "self," linking it with the cholinergic system.[4]
Early life and education
Karczmar was born on May 9, 1917, in Warsaw, Poland, to Stanislas "Szmaya" Karczmar and Helena "Hendla" Karczmar-Billauer. He graduated from Collegium High School in Warsaw in 1934. His studies at the University of Warsaw were interrupted by anti-Semitic incidents and the outbreak of World War II.[5]
After emigrating to the United States, he enrolled in graduate school at Columbia University, New York, earning his M.A. in zoology in 1941. Karczmar was naturalized as an American citizen in January 1946. He obtained his Ph.D. in biophysics in 1947 under the mentorship of Selig Hecht. Karczmar served as a teaching fellow at Columbia University and worked as a postdoctoral fellow on limb regeneration with Oscar E. Schotte at Amherst College, Massachusetts. He also studied the delays in neuromuscular relaxation with Alexander Sandow of New York University.[6]
Career
After graduating from Columbia, he served as assistant and associate professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., from 1946 to 1953, where he worked in the cholinergic field under the guidance of Professor Koppanyi. From 1953 to 1956, he served as a fellow at Sterling Winthrop Research Institute in Rensselaer, New York, being part of a team that developed Ambenonium (Mytelase), a drug used in the treatment of myasthenia gravis, and the vasodilator amitriptyline (Myordil).
In 1956, Karczmar moved to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Illinois, where was professor and chairman of the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics between 1956 and 1986. From 1964 to 1986, he was the senior director of the Institute for Mind, Drugs, and Behavior. From 1988 to 1989, he was the medical director of Foundation 41 in Sydney, Australia. From 1956 to 2008 he was a senior consultant at Research Services, VA, and a consultant to the Surgeon General of the United States (1987–2017). He was a trustee and secretary of the Chicago Association for Research and Education in Science from 1987 until his death[7] and organized or chaired several international symposia on neurobiology.[8][9]
Later life and death
Karczmar was professor emeritus of pharmacology at the Stritch School of Medicine.[10]
He died in Chicago at the age of 100 on August 17, 2017.[11]
Research
In the 1940s, Karczmar proposed the existence of a nerve growth factor based on his demonstration of the quantitative effects of partial ablations of urodele limb innervations on their post-amputation regeneration.[12] Also in the 1940s, Karczmar conducted studies of anticholinesterase agents (antiChEs). With Theodore Koppanyi, he studied the direct synaptic effects of organophosphorus (OP) anticholinesterases (antiChEs), which are independent of their enzymic block, their morphogenetic (teratologic) effects, and their postnatal behavioral actions resulting from prenatal application.[13] He also investigated whether OP antiChEs damage the blood–brain barrier. This research described the role of cholinesterases as morphogens and "transport" or "scavenger" enzymes (Karczmar et al., 1951).[citation needed]
This research led Karczmar to propose the pre-neurogenetic appearance of the cholinergic system components, their non-parallel ontogenesis, and their widespread phylogenesis, independent of innervation or motility.[14][15]
In the 1950s, Karczmar and Steve Thesleff demonstrated the phenomenon of desensitization (receptor inactivation) at the neuromuscular junction. Karczmar described the reciprocal process called sensitization, which is inducible by several drugs, such as oxamides and NaF, and is ascribed to an allosteric receptor change.[16][17] Karczmar also studied the structural nature of central cholinergic receptors, investigating the structural similarity between peripheral and central muscarinic receptors.[18]
In the 1950s and 1960s, Karczmar, Kyozo Koketsu, Syogoro Nishi, and Nae Dun identified three ganglionic receptor sites (nicotinic, muscarinic, and peptidergic) and their potentials, describing their ionic mechanisms and the contribution of second messengers to ganglionic transmission.[19]
Since the 1960s, Karczmar's work addressed the role of the central cholinergic system in various functions and behaviors, including respiration, aggression,[20] nociception,[21] learning,[22] addiction,[23] obsession, and fixation, sexual and motor activity,[24] seizures,[25] EEG rhythms, paradoxical sleep, and behavioral and EEG alerting.[26] He and his associates provided early neurochemical evidence for the interaction between the cholinergic and other transmitter systems.[27]
Karczmar investigated whether cholinergic agonists counteract the behavior exhibited in animal models of schizophrenia.[28] Based on these findings and other cholinergic behavioral and EEG actions, Karczmar proposed that the cholinergic system contributes to alertness, cognitive behavior, and the animal's (and human's) appraisal of the environment; he named the pertinent syndrome the "Cholinergic Alert Non-mobile Behavior".[29]
From the 1970s onwards, Karczmar explored the notion of the "self",[30] suggesting a need to differentiate it from cognition and perception. While he considered himself a reductionist, he suggested that the current state of neuroscience is insufficient for a complete explanation, and speculated that with future advances in physics, the nature of "self" might become explainable, perhaps via multidimensional string theory.[31]
