Donald F. Steiner
Wolf Prize Laureate in Medicine 1985
Donald F. Steiner
Affiliation at the time of the award:
University of Chicago Medical Center, USA
Award citation:
“for discoveries concerning the biosynthesis and processing of insulin which have had profound implications for basic biology and clinical medicine”.
Prize share:
None
Donald F. Steiner (born in 1930, USA) obtained his B.S. in Chemistry and Zoology from the University of Cincinnati in 1952, followed by the completion of his M.S. in biochemistry and M.D. from the University of Chicago in 1956. His medical and research training encompassed an internship at King County Hospital and residency/post-doctoral research at the University of Washington. Subsequently, he re-joined the University of Chicago as a faculty member in 1960.
Professor Donald F. Steiner found that insulin is synthesized from a larger precursor protein in the beta cells of the pancreas. This led the way to elucidation of how the islet cells function, and how peptide hormones, in general, are synthesized and metabolized Steiner and his colleagues have also devised methods for measuring insulin and its precursors in human serum.
The understanding of the biochemical nature of insulin and its production and the development of methods for measurement have had profound clinical implications. The understanding of the action of insulin has been enhanced, the treatment of diabetes has been improved, and the diagnosis of insulin secreting tumors of the pancreas made simpler and more accurate. His discoveries paved the way for the recent findings of the polypeptide nature of hormones and neurotransmitters.
Steiner has extended his studies of peptide hormone biosynthesis to the level of the insulin gene and its aberrations.
His accomplishments have provided the framework for a great many past and future endeavors in molecular and clinical endocrinology, including the recent development and production of cloned human insulin.