Luis Federico Leloir was born on September 6, 1906, in Paris, France. Leloir's parents, Federico and Hortensia Aguirre Leloir, were in France only for a visit when Leloir was born, and returned to their home in Buenos Aires, Argentina, when he was two years old. Leloir grew up in a house filled with books on a variety of topics. He enrolled at the University of Buenos Aires to study medicine, and graduated with a medical degree in 1932.
Leloir found medicine somewhat limited in terms of the treatment options available at the time, and had no confidence in his own ability to diagnose and treat his patients. Therefore, he decided to try a position in research at the Institute of Physiology at the University of Buenos Aires to help develop new options in treatment for physicians and to work on a Ph.D. degree. He worked under Bernardo Houssay, a Nobel winner in 1947 in the area of adrenal gland research, and consequently developed an interest in biochemistry. Leloir's relationship with Houssay would last the rest of Houssay's life, and Leloir described him as an intellectual inspiration.
In 1936 Leloir left Argentina to spend a year in Cambridge, England to conduct postdoctoral work. He then returned to Buenos Aires and began research on the breakdown of fatty acids in the liver. Eventually, his work led to a collaborative discovery of the peptide hypertensin, which is linked to high blood pressure and hypertension. Another group of scientists at Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical company in Indianapolis, made a similar discovery around the same time, and named their peptide angiotensin. Both groups used these different names for the same peptide for several years, fighting over which it should be called, until finally a compromise was reached. Today the peptide is known as angiotensin.
Though averse to political involvement, Leloir was affected by the Argentine government's decision in 1943 to dismiss Houssay from his position at the university. Houssay had innocently signed a letter that was interpreted as antigovernment, and the country's politics at the time were in a state of upheaval. Many others at the university resigned their positions in support of Houssay, and Leloir decided it would be a good time for him to work abroad. He had married Amelie Zuherbuhler in 1943; together they left for the United States.
Two years later Leloir returned to Argentina to work again under Houssay, who had been reinstated at the university. Leloir, though, had begun to hatch a plan to start a private research institute, and slowly began gathering the necessary team, including Houssay. Leloir received backing from Jaime Campomar, the owner of a textile firm who had expressed an interest to Houssay in sponsoring a research institute specifically in the area of biochemistry. Thus the Institute for Biochemical Investigations was begun. After Campomar died in 1957, Leloir applied to the National Institutes of Health in the United States for funding, and to his surprise obtained it. The institute continued to receive monies from the NIH for several years until rules for granting money to foreign applicants were changed. In 1958 the government of Argentina offered assistance as well, giving the institute a former girls' school for a new home.
Scientists at this time were familiar with the idea that carbohydrates are broken down by the body into simpler sugars for energy. Beginning in the late 1940s, Leloir believed there was a "missing link" in the understanding of this process, and set out to find it. What he eventually discovered was a group of substances, now known as sugar nucleotides, that are responsible for the conversion into energy of sugars stored in the body. The discovery of these substances helped Leloir, among others, to determine specifically the process of carbohydrate conversion into energy.
Leloir also found that a complex sugar called glycogen is synthesized with these sugar nucleotides, stored in the liver and muscles, and then broken down by the body into simpler glucose as energy is needed. For his work with sugar nucleotides, Leloir was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1970. He was only the third Argentine to receive the Nobel in any field, and the first in the area of chemistry. He instantly became a national hero, and was later honored as the subject on a postage stamp.
Leloir played a major role in the establishment of the Argentine Society for Biochemical Research as well as the Panamerican Association of Biochemical Sciences. In addition to the Nobel, he received prizes and honors from universities all over the globe. He has been given credit for performing major scientific research with limited funding, often using homemade apparatus and gadgets, and encouraging inventions for use in his laboratory. Leloir was known to be courteous and accessible. He died on December 2, 1987, in Buenos Aires, leaving his wife, one daughter, and several grandchildren.
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