Harvey Akio Itano | |
|---|---|
 Itano in 1942 | |
| Born | (1920-11-03)November 3, 1920 Sacramento, California |
| Died | May 8, 2010(2010-05-08) (aged 89) La Jolla, California |
| Education | University of California, Berkeley,St. Louis University,California Institute of Technology |
| Known for | Differentiating normal and sickle cell hemoglobins |
| Awards | Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry(1954) Martin Luther King Jr. Medical Achievement Award |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Biochemistry |
| Institutions | |
| Thesis | I. Contributions to the Study of Sickle Cell Hemoglobin II. A Rapid Diagnostic Test for Sickle Cell Anemia (1950) |
| Doctoral advisor | Linus Pauling |
Harvey Akio Itano (Japanese:板野 秋雄,[1] November 3, 1920 – May 8, 2010) was an Americanbiochemist best known for his work on the molecular basis ofsickle cell anemia and other diseases. In collaboration withLinus Pauling, Itano usedelectrophoresis to demonstrate the difference between normalhemoglobin andsickle cell hemoglobin; their 1949 paper "Sickle Cell Anemia, a Molecular Disease" (coauthored also withS. J. Singer andIbert C. Wells)[2] was a landmark in bothmolecular medicine andprotein electrophoresis, though the use of electrophoresis to separate hemoglobin variants had been pioneered byMaud Menten and collaborators some years earlier.[3]
In 1979, Itano became the firstJapanese American elected to theUnited States National Academy of Sciences (in the Genetics section). Itano was an emeritus professor ofpathology at theUniversity of California, San Diego.[4] In 2010, Itano died of complications from Parkinson's disease in La Jolla, California.[5]
Itano was born inSacramento, California. Itano attended theUniversity of California, Berkeley where he was valedictorian of the Class of 1942.[6] However, due toExecutive Order 9066, Itano missed commencement in Berkeley after he and his family were sent to the Tanforan Assembly center, prior to being sent to theTule Lake internment camp.[7] Itano was later allowed to leave camp to attend theSt. Louis University medical school, earning his M.D. in 1945. He then went to graduate school at theCalifornia Institute of Technology, where he received doctorates in chemistry and physics in 1950.[8]
While at Caltech, Itano joined the lab ofLinus Pauling and began working onsickle cell anemia, a genetic disease that Pauling was interested in.[4] Pauling was convinced that sickle cell disease was caused by defective hemoglobin, and set Itano to find out what made sickle cell hemoglobin chemically different.[9] After failing with a number of other techniques, Itano succeeded in differentiating normal and sickle cell hemoglobins usingmoving boundary electrophoresis.[10] He used an apparatus designed byStanley M. Swingle, a variation on the original apparatus of electrophoresis pioneerArne Tiselius.[11] He found that, under certain conditions, sickle cell hemoglobin is positively charged while normal hemoglobin is not, creating a difference inelectrophoretic mobility.[9] By 1956,Vernon Ingram had determined that this was caused by a single difference inpeptide sequence,[12] which by 1958 he determined to be avaline in the sickle cell mutant hemoglobin in place ofglutamic acid in normal hemoglobin A.[13]
Itano's subsequent work brought the new field of "molecular medicine" to other genetic and blood diseases. In 1954, he won theEli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry, and in 1972 he won theMartin Luther King Jr. Medical Achievement Award, recognizing his sickle cell work.[10]
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