[leish-l] Obituary: William Trager

[Fred R. Opperdoes]

At 7:32 PM -0500 1/25/05, ProMED Digest wrote:
>
>Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2005 17:09:43 -0500 (EST)
>From: ProMED-mail <promed at promed.isid.harvard.edu>
>Subject: PRO> Obituary: William Trager
>
>OBITUARY: WILLIAM TRAGER
>*************************
>A ProMED-mail post
><http://www.promedmail.org>
>ProMED-mail, a program of the
>International Society for Infectious Diseases
><http://www.isid.org>
>
>Date: 25 Jan 2005
>From: Jerome Vanderberg <jerome.vanderberg at med.nyu.edu>
>Via: ProMED-mail<promed at promedmail.org>
>
>
>This is to inform all of his friends and admirers that Dr. William Trager,
>one of the prime leaders in malariology, died at home last Saturday night.
>He had had mild influenza last week but began feeling worse Saturday night,
>then suffered a heart attack 2 hours later.
>
>Dr. Trager was about 95. He remained active, going to his office at the
>Rockefeller University 3 days a week. Several colleagues reported having
>had scientific discussions with him over the last few months, so he was
>going strong until the very end -- exactly as he would have liked and as we
>all might have expected of him.  Bill Trager was a talented, inspired,
>inspiring, insightful and honest scientist, and was one of the most decent
>human beings that I ever had the privilege of knowing.  He will be missed.
>
>- --
>ProMED-mail
><promed at promedmail.org>
>
>[ProMED-mail thanks Jerome Vanderberg for this information. Professor
>Trager received the Prince Mahidol Award in 1994 (named in honor of the
>Thai Prince).  The award statement included the following:
><http://kanchanapisek.or.th/pmaf/awardees/1994.en>
>
>"Professor William Trager, a protozoologist and an authority on tropical
>medicine and insect physiology, is a leader in the fight against malaria,
>the most prevalent disease in the world today. In 1976, he and a colleague
>described a practical method for the continuous cultivation of _Plasmodium
>falciparum_, the most highly pathogenic human malaria parasite. Adopted by
>laboratories around the world, this method has given rise to a spectrum of
>physiological, biochemical, immunological, and genetic studies that were
>previously impossible or prohibitively difficult, opening the way for
>scientists working to develop an effective malaria vaccine. _P. falciparum_
>cultures have also advanced work on malarial drug resistance and efforts to
>screen for new types of antimalarial compounds.
>
>Dr. Trager's malaria reseach began 60 years ago, when he provided the first
>direct evidence of the significance of nutritional factors in the host's
>susceptibility to malaria. Since then, he has shown that intracellular
>parasites lack certain biosynthetic pathways and depend on their host cells
>for cofactors essential to their own metabolism. His laboratory provided
>the 1st demonstration of the fine-structural relationship between malaria
>parasites and their host red cells. They also elucidated the cellular and
>physiological basis for the relative resistance to malaria conferred by the
>sickle haemoglobin gene. Recently, they achieved axenic cultivation of _P.
>falciparum_, obtaining extracellular development of the complete
>erythrocytic cycle, work that may permit new research on the nature of the
>parasite's dependence on its host. Methods developed for extracellular
>cultivation of _P. falciparum_ may also be applicable to other parasites
>that have resisted cultivation, including other human malaria parasites.
>
>Other contributions include early studies on the nutritional needs of the
>larvae of _Aedes aegypti_, the yellow fever vector; demonstration of the
>mechanism of acquired immunity to ticks; and development of cultivation
>methods for a principal trypanosomal parasite of cattle.
>
>Professor William Trager graduated with a B.S. from Rutgers University and
>received a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He spent his entire professional
>career at the Rockefeller University, where he became a Professor Emeritus
>in 1980 and remains active as head of the laboratory of parasitology. "
>- - Mod.LM]
>............pg/lm/dk


-- 
Fred R. Opperdoes,      	      	      	    
Research Unit for Tropical Diseases (TROP) and
Laboratory of Biochemistry (BCHM) 
Christian de Duve Institute of Cellular Pathology (ICP)
and Catholic University of Louvain (UCL)
Avenue Hippocrate 74-75, B-1200 Brussels, Belgium

Tel: +32-2-764.74.39 (secretary) Fax: +32-2-762.68.53
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E-mail:Opperdoes at bchm.ucl.ac.be
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           http://www.icp.ucl.ac.be/~opperd/Fred.html