Remembering Cholera Expert Dr. S. N. De on 100th Birth Anniversary

摘要

In Science and Culture November-December 2014 issue, it has been rightly connoted about physician and bacteriologist Dr. Sambhu Nath De (February 1, 1915 -April 15, 1985) as 'faint trace of link' of a person from Indian sub-continent with the Nobel Prize award in Physiology or Medicine section. In May-June 2010 issue of this journal, the pioneering work of Dr. De on elucidation of biological activity of the elusive 84kDa cholera toxin produced by the comma-shaped Gram-negative motile Vibrio cholerae bacterium, one of the most dominant ones in world has been described. Nobel Laureate American biologist (1958) Prof. Joshua Lederberg had proposed the name of Dr. S. N. De for the Nobel Prize in this section more than once, and appreciated Dr. De's good intuition in working with specific strains of the bacterium, experimental and observational skills in his commentary article 'S. N. De - Regicide of Reigning Dogma', submitted to Current Science (published in 25th July 1990 issue). Dr. De's discoveries during 1950s opened the doorway to our present understanding of the molecular events in pathogenesis of cholera, the frightening 'killer' epidemic human disease causing severe watery diarrhea and one of the six most formidable infectious ones in world; his seminal works also marked the founding principle in research and effective treatment of cholera and related diarrheal illnesses. Year 2009 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of cholera enterotoxin by Dr. De, and year 2015 marks his one-hundredth birth anniversary. I pay heartfelt tribute to this great scientist.