Earl W. Sutherland | Biography

Earl Sutherland was a biochemist who extended research and knowledge into the mechanisms by which hormones regulate body functions. His early work showed how the hormone adrenaline regulates the breakdown of sugar in the liver to release a surge of energy when the body is under stress. Later, Sutherland discovered a chemical within cells called cyclic adenosine 3'5'-monophosphate, or cyclic AMP. This chemical provided a universal link between hormones and the regulation of metabolism within cells. For this work, Sutherland was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine in 1971.

Earl Wilbur Sutherland, Jr., the fifth of six children in his family, was born on November 19, 1915, in Burlingame, Kansas, a small farming community. His father, Earl Wilbur Sutherland, a Wisconsin native, had attended Grinnell College for two years and his mother attended college and received some nursing training. In 1933, Sutherland entered Washburn College in Topeka, Kansas. Supporting his studies by working as an orderly in a hospital, Sutherland graduated with a B.S. in 1937. He married the same year. Sutherland then entered Washington University Medical School in St. Louis, Missouri. There he enrolled in a pharmacology class taught by Carl Ferdinand Cori, who would share the 1947 Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology with his wife Gerty Cori. Impressed by Sutherland's abilities, Cori offered him a job as a student assistant. This was Sutherland's first experience with research. The research on the sugar glucose that Sutherland undertook in Cori's laboratory started him on a line of inquiry that led to his later groundbreaking studies.

Sutherland received his M.D. in 1942. He then worked for one year as an intern at Barnes Hospital while continuing to do research in Cori's laboratory. Sutherland was called into service during World War II as a battalion surgeon under General George S. Patton. Later in the war he served in Germany as a staff physician in a military hospital.

In 1945, Sutherland returned to Washington University in St. Louis. He was unsure whether to continue practicing medicine or to commit himself to a career in research. Sutherland later attributed his decision to stay in the laboratory to the example of his mentor Carl F. Cori. By 1953, Sutherland had advanced to the rank of associate professor at Washington University. During these years he came into contact with many leading figures in biochemistry, including Arthur Kornberg, Edwin G. Krebs, T. Z. Posternak, and others now recognized as among the founders of modern molecular biology. But Sutherland preferred, for the most part, to do his research independently. While at Washington University, Sutherland began a project to understand how an enzyme known as phosphorylase breaks down glycogen, a form of the sugar stored in the liver. He also studied the roles of the hormone adrenaline, also known as epinephrine, and glucagon, secreted by the pancreas, in stimulating the release of energy-producing glucose from glycogen.

Sutherland was offered the chairmanship of the Department of Pharmacology at Western Reserve (now Case Western) University in Cleveland in 1953. It was during the ten years he spent in Cleveland that Sutherland clarified an important mechanism by which hormones produce their effects. Scientists had previously thought that hormones acted on whole organs. Sutherland, however, showed that hormones stimulate individual cells in a process that takes place in two steps. First, a hormone attaches to specific receptors on the outside of the cell membrane. Sutherland called the hormone a "first messenger." The binding of the hormone to the membrane triggers release of a molecule known as cyclic AMP within the cell. Cyclic AMP then goes on to play many roles in the cell's metabolism, and Sutherland referred to the molecule as the "second messenger" in the mechanism of hormone action. In particular, Sutherland studied the effects of the hormone adrenaline, also called epinephrine, on liver cells. When adrenaline binds to liver cells, cyclic AMP is released and directs the conversion of sugar from a stored form into a form the cell can use.

Sutherland made two more important discoveries while at Western Reserve. He found that other hormones also spur the release of cyclic AMP when they bind to cells, in particular, the adrenocorticotropic hormone and the thyroid-stimulating hormone. This implied that cyclic AMP was a sort of universal intermediary in this process, and it explained why different hormones might induce similar effects. In addition, cyclic AMP was found to play an important role in the metabolism of one-celled organisms, such as the amoeba and the bacterium Escherichia coli, which do not have hormones. That cyclic AMP is found in both simple and complex organisms implies that it is a very basic and important biological molecule and that it arose early in evolution and has been conserved throughout millennia.

In 1963, Sutherland became professor of physiology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, a move which relieved him of his teaching duties and enabled him to devote more of his time to research. Sutherland remarried and the couple later had two girls and two boys.

At Vanderbilt Sutherland continued his work on cyclic AMP, supported by a Career Investigatorship awarded by the American Heart Association. Sutherland studied the role of cyclic AMP in the contraction of heart muscle. He and other researchers continued to discover physiological processes in different tissues and various animal species that are influenced by cyclic AMP, for example in brain cells and cancer cells. Sutherland also did research on a similar molecule known as cyclic GMP (guanosine 3',5'-cyclic monophosphate). In the meantime, his pioneering studies had opened up a new field of research. By 1971, as many as two thousand scientists were studying cyclic AMP.

For most of his career, Sutherland was well-known mainly to his scientific colleagues. In the early 1970s, however, a rush of awards gained him more widespread public recognition. In 1970, he received the prestigious Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award. In 1971, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for "his long study of hormones, the chemical substances that regulate virtually every body function," as well as the American Heart Association Research Achievement Award. In 1973, he was bestowed with the National Medal of Science of the United States. During his career, Sutherland was also elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences, and he belonged to the American Society of Biological Chemists, the American Chemical Society, the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received honorary degrees from Yale University and Washington University. In 1973, Sutherland moved to the University of Miami. Shortly thereafter, he suffered a massive esophageal hemorrhage, and he died on March 9, 1974, after surgery for internal bleeding, at the age of 58.