(Circulation. 1999;100:332.)
© 1999 American Heart Association, Inc.
Cardiovascular News |
1999 Bristol-Myers Squibb Cardiovascular Metabolic Research Award
Earl Davie, PhD, Defined the System of Blood Coagulation
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Ascientist whose work with the blood coagulation system led to effective treatments for people with hemophilia is the recipient of the ninth annual Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Cardiovascular/Metabolic Research. Earl W. Davie, PhD, professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington in Seattle, received the award May 12, 1999, at a dinner in New York, NY. The prize carries with it a $50 000 award and a silver medallion.
In research that spanned more than 4 decades, Dr Davie hypothesized, elucidated, and defined the blood clotting system. His work began as a graduate student, when he showed that the digestive pancreatic protein trypsinogen was converted into an active enzyme called trypsin when a single peptide bond was cleaved. This study served as a model for the coagulation process proposed by Davie and his collaborator, Dr Oscar Ratnoff. As a young researcher at Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio, Dr Davie studied the blood of people with rare clotting disorders. He discovered than in some cases, blood that would not clot on its own would clot when combined in a test tube with the plasma of a person with normal blood. From this, he predicted that blood that did not clot lacked certain factors that were the signals for coagulation.
In 1962 and 1964, Drs Davie and Ratnoff published their theory
that coagulation was the result of a series of sequential actions in
which proteins in blood plasma are activated from a dormant
state. The final result is