Paul Talalay

Paul Talalay (31 March 1923 – 10 March 2019)^[1] was the John Jacob Abel Distinguished Service Professor of Pharmacology and director of the Laboratory for Molecular Sciences at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. He is the founder of the Brassica Chemoprotection Laboratory for the study of edible plants that induce protective enzyme activity in the body and may help prevent the development of cancer.

Biography

Paul Talalay was born to Russian Jewish parents in Berlin, Germany, but immigrated to England with his family in 1933, shortly after the Nazi Party came to power. His father Joseph was an engineer and inventor, and his mother Sophie was a homemaker.^[2] He was educated at Bedford School and, in 1940, he travelled to the United States to enter the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he majored in biology. In 1944, Talalay entered medical school at the University of Chicago and, in 1946, he transferred to Yale School of Medicine. He received his M.D. in 1948. In 1950, he received a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Fellowship and returned to the University of Chicago to begin research on steroid hormones. Between 1962 and 1974, Talalay was director of the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. In 1974 he was appointed as John Jacob Abel Distinguished Service Professor of Pharmacology.^[3]

Talalay's career was devoted to cancer research and the achievement of early protection against cell damage. A pioneer in the field of chemoprotective research strategies, Talalay and his colleagues devised simple cell culture methods for detecting phytochemicals which appear to boost enzymes that detoxify carcinogens in the body. This work led to the isolation of sulforaphane, found in broccoli, as a potent inducer of detoxifying phase two enzymes. These findings, published in 1992,^[4] attracted worldwide attention as a major breakthrough in understanding the link between cruciferous vegetable consumption and reduced cancer risk.^{[5][6][7][8][9][10]}

Talalay was awarded one of the first lifetime professorships of the American Cancer Society. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The M.D. – Ph.D. Student Library at Johns Hopkins University is named in Talalay's honour.^[11]

Filmmaker Rachel Talalay is his daughter.

References

1. "Paul Talalay, researcher who found cancer-preventing qualities in broccoli, dies at 95". The Washington Post. 13 March 2019. Retrieved 14 March 2019.
2. "Dr. Paul Talalay, Johns Hopkins molecular pharmacologist who made broccoli famous as a cancer fighter, dies". The Baltimore Sun. 13 March 2019. Retrieved 14 March 2019.
3. Talalay, Paul (12 August 2005). "A Fascination with Enzymes: The Journey Not the Arrival Matters". Journal of Biological Chemistry. 280 (32): 28829–28847. doi:10.1074/jbc.X500004200. PMID 15941714.
4. "Susan Talalay – There's more to life than broccoli Anti-cancer researcher would like to get past the B-word fixation – Baltimore Sun". Baltimore Sun. Retrieved 2 October 2014.
5. Kresge, Nicole; Simoni, Robert D.; Hill, Robert L. (17 August 2007). "Steroid Metabolizing Enzymes and Cancer: the Work of Paul Talalay". Journal of Biological Chemistry. 282 (33): e27–e28. doi:10.1016/S0021-9258(20)54434-7.
6. "Hopkins scientists expand their 20-year mission to understand the disease-deterring benefits of a potent plant compound found in broccoli". Johns Hopkins Medicine. Talalay discovered a compound that demonstrated a powerful ability to protect cells from the sort of damage that can instigate cancer. The compound, sulforaphane, .. Since then, dozens of journal articles have flowed from the discovery
7. Emily Langer (24 March 2019). "Paul Talalay: Scientist who found in broccoli sprouts an aid to preventing cancer". The Independent. Archived from the original on 2022-05-25. But Talalay was keen to avoid hype. 'Do I tell everybody to eat broccoli sprouts? No, and we can't say that eating sprouts will guarantee you won't get cancer or heart disease. But I believe they are protective.'
8. "Fahey founded Brassica Protection Products to market broccoli sprouts and other edibles with health benefits supported by their research..." https://truebroc.com/brassica/
9. Steinmetz, Kristi A.; Potter, John D.; Folsom, Aaron R. (1 February 1993). "Vegetables, Fruit, and Lung Cancer in the Iowa Women's Health Study". Cancer Research. 53 (3): 536–543. PMID 8425185.
10. • https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/316448 "How does broccoli help prevent cancer? Study sheds light Researchers from Oregon State University..."

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    • https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2011/12/06/broccoli-and-cancer-a-response-from-the-institute-of-food-research/ "Other studies that have used more informative cohorts have reported statistically valid links between prostate cancer risk and cruciferous vegetable intake. So that's why we're continuing our research efforts to understand the science behind this phenomenon, which will hopefully end up benefitting men in the long run. – Professor Richard Mithen, Institute of Food Research"
    • https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/05/beth-israel-researchers-uncover-anti-cancer-drug-mechanism-in-broccoli/ (Harvard Gazette Powell 2019) "Pier Paolo Pandolfi at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center's Cancer Center and Cancer Research Institute" - "New research has linked a compound found in Brussels sprouts, broccoli, and other cruciferous vegetables to one of the body's most potent tumor-suppressing genes..."
    • Lozanovski, Vladimir J.; Polychronidis, Georgios; Gross, Wolfgang; Gharabaghi, Negin; Mehrabi, Arianeb; Hackert, Thilo; Schemmer, Peter; Herr, Ingrid (June 2020). "Broccoli sprout supplementation in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer is difficult despite positive effects—results from the POUDER pilot study". Investigational New Drugs. 38 (3): 776–784. doi:10.1007/s10637-019-00826-z. PMC 7211206. PMID 31250356.
    • Li, Yanyan; Zhang, Tao; Korkaya, Hasan; Liu, Suling; Lee, Hsiu-Fang; Newman, Bryan; Yu, Yanke; Clouthier, Shawn G.; Schwartz, Steven J.; Wicha, Max S.; Sun, Duxin (1 May 2010). "Sulforaphane, a Dietary Component of Broccoli/Broccoli Sprouts, Inhibits Breast Cancer Stem Cells". Clinical Cancer Research. 16 (9): 2580–2590. doi:10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-09-2937. PMC 2862133. PMID 20388854.
    • Zhang, Y.; Talalay, P.; Cho, C. G.; Posner, G. H. (15 March 1992). "A major inducer of anticarcinogenic protective enzymes from broccoli: isolation and elucidation of structure". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 89 (6): 2399–2403. Bibcode:1992PNAS...89.2399Z. doi:10.1073/pnas.89.6.2399. PMC 48665. PMID 1549603.
    • Clarke, John D.; Dashwood, Roderick H.; Ho, Emily (8 October 2008). "Multi-targeted prevention of cancer by sulforaphane". Cancer Letters. 269 (2): 291–304. doi:10.1016/j.canlet.2008.04.018. PMC 2579766. PMID 18504070.
    • Fahey, Jed W.; Zhang, Yuesheng; Talalay, Paul (16 September 1997). "Broccoli sprouts: An exceptionally rich source of inducers of enzymes that protect against chemical carcinogens". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 94 (19): 10367–10372. Bibcode:1997PNAS...9410367F. doi:10.1073/pnas.94.19.10367. PMC 23369. PMID 9294217.
    • Zhang, Yuesheng; Tang, Li (September 2007). "Discovery and development of sulforaphane as a cancer chemopreventive phytochemical". Acta Pharmacologica Sinica. 28 (9): 1343–1354. doi:10.1111/j.1745-7254.2007.00679.x. PMID 17723168. S2CID 38357664.
    • https://www.aicr.org/cancer-prevention/food-facts/broccoli-cruciferous-vegetables/ Broccoli and Cruciferous Vegetables: Reduce Overall Cancer Risk updated on April 6, 2021 American Institute for Cancer Research, 1560 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 1000 Arlington, VA 22209
11. "A Nibble of Prevention". Johns Hopkins Magazine.