Chapters authored
The Angiotensin Affair: How Great Minds Thinking Alike Came to a Historical Agreement
In 1934, J. C. Fasciolo had to submit a thesis and Dr. Houssay suggested he investigate about nephrogenic hypertension. E. Braun‐Menéndez showed interest in helping and Drs. L.F. Leloir and J.M. Muñoz from the Institute of Physiology joined them in their attempt to isolate and purify the pressor substance. In 1939, they extracted the substance “hypertension” from the venous blood from the ischemic kidneys. They proposed an enzyme‐substrate reaction. They named hypertensinogen the substrate and hypertensinases the enzymes that break down the hypertension. Two months following the Argentine publication, the team in the United States, formed by I.H. Page and O.M. Helmer, published their findings, which were in agreement with those reported by the Argentine team. By 1940, they isolated angiotonin, the equivalent of hypertension, and called the renin substrate hypertensinogen. In 1957, in the conference held in Ann Arbor, Braun‐Menéndez and Page agreed on a new nomenclature. As a result, the words angiotensinogen and angiotensin were born from the combination of the names originally set by both teams. The discovery of the renin‐angiotensin system is an example that science should follow: Value the progress made by colleagues, collaborate side by side, and pursue the ultimate truth.
Part of the book: Renin-Angiotensin System