(Hypertension. 1998;32:1-2.)
© 1998 American Heart Association, Inc.
Professor Alberto C. Taquini
1905–1998
With great sadness we learned of the death
on March 4, 1998, of Professor Alberto C. Taquini, one of the
discoverers of angiotensin, a pioneer of hypertension
research, and a leading figure in cardiovascular and
clinical research in Latin America for the past 60 years. Professor
Taquini was 93 years old when he died after a brief illness.
Dr Alberto C. Taquini was born on December 6, 1905,
in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was a member of the
distinguished group of Argentine scientists surrounding Dr Bernardo
Houssay, winner of the Nobel Prize of Medicine and Physiology (1946),
at the Department of Physiology of the School of Medicine of the
University of Buenos Aires. Together with Luis Federico Leloir (Nobel
Prize of Chemistry, 1970), Eduardo
Braun-Menéndez,
and Juan Carlos Fasciolo, Dr Taquini described the enzymatic nature of
the renin-angiotensin system and its link with
hypertension.
On the basis of the experiments of Goldblatt et al1
published in 1934, Houssay and Fasciolo demonstrated an increase in
blood pressure when grafting an ischemic kidney to the neck of
a nephrectomized dog.2 Following on these initial results,
Houssay and Taquini3 showed the presence of a pressor
substance in the blood obtained from the renal vein of an
ischemic kidney. Taquini obtained a fellowship at the end of
1938 to work in the Fatigue Laboratory at Harvard University with Dr B.
Dill and Dr Paul D. White. His place on the Buenos Aires team studying
renal ischemia was taken by Eduardo Braun-Menéndez, who
had just arrived from the United Kingdom. The Argentine group
postulated an enzyme-substrate type of reaction,4 5 while
Page and his group, working simultaneously in Cleveland on
renal pressor mechanisms, proposed that there was a plasma
activator of renin that resulted in the production
of a crystalline pressor substance, which they called
angiotonin.6 7 Later on, E. Braun-Menéndez, J.C.
Fasciolo, L.F. Leloir, J.M. Muñoz, and A.C. Taquini published in
a book the original work of the Buenos Aires group.8 This
book was translated into English by Dr Louis Dexter who, at the
beginning of the 1940s, had been Houssay's fellow at the Department of
Physiology of the University of Buenos Aires School of Medicine. The
renin-angiotensin system has since been demonstrated to be
related to numerous physiological regulatory
processes, both in normal and pathophysiological
conditions, and to play critical roles in the regulation of
circulation, high blood pressure, heart failure, and coronary
artery disease.
Dr Taquini was chair of Internal Medicine (1952–1956) and of
Physiology (1961–1970) in the University of Buenos Aires School of
Medicine. He was a major personality participating in many areas of
scientific research in physiology, cardiology, and
internal medicine. He trained a significant number of highly qualified
investigators and university professors. Because of his achievements in
medicine and science, Dr Taquini was recognized as an outstanding
national and international personality in the world of
cardiology and hypertension. For more than 50 years,
between 1942 and the date of his death, he was the director of the
Centro de Investigaciones Cardiológicas of the University of
Buenos Aires School of Medicine. He was one of the first full-time
university professors in Argentina.
Dr Taquini was President of the International Society of
Cardiology (1954–1962); the International Council of
Hypertension (1954–1968); the Argentine Society of Clinical
Investigation (1957–1958); twice of the Argentine Society of
Cardiology; and the Argentine Association for the
Progress of Science (1967–1987). Dr Taquini received about 100
national and international awards and was named an Honorary Member of
the American College of Physicians, the American
Physiological Society, the American Heart
Association, the Cardiology Society of Belgium, the
Cardiology Society of France, and the International
Academy of Medicine. He was a member of the National Academy of
Medicine of Argentina. He was the first investigator to reach the
highest category in the National Research Council in Science and
Technology of Argentina (CONICET). He was Emeritus Professor of the
University of Buenos Aires and Visiting Professor at the University of
California, Stanford, Columbia, the University of Michigan, and Cornell
in the United States; the University of Toronto in Canada;
Oxford in Great Britain; University of Milan in Italy; University of
San Marcos in Peru; and the University of Chile. He was the first
Secretary of State for Science and Technology of Argentina.
Dr Taquini was the single author of four books, he collaborated in
several others, and he published more than 350 scientific papers. He
was a member of the editorial committees of many journals:
Medicina, Revista de la Sociedad Argentina de
Cardiología, Acta Physiologica et Pharmacologica
Latino-Americana, American Heart Journal, and Archives
Internationales de Pharmacodynamie et Thérapie, among
others.
Dr Taquini remained fully active until the end of his life, the
distinguished and always alert and very informed gentleman and elder
statesman of Argentine cardiology and science, still
discussing and writing about angiotensin receptor subtypes
when already in his 90s. He played golf and drove his car until only a
couple of months before his death.
He was the mentor and role model for a legion of scientists in
Argentina and Latin America. He was an example of a dedicated scientist
and concerned physician who lived in a time when technology was limited
but intelligence supreme in finding ways to open doors to new worlds of
knowledge that would produce unexpected results in the future. Those
initial experiments leading to the discovery of angiotensin
could hardly have anticipated the extraordinary developments that took
place much later, as the role of the renin-angiotensin
system in the cardiovascular system, the kidney, the
adrenals, and the brain was discovered. This we know has led to the
wide use today of angiotensin-converting enzyme
inhibitors and angiotensin type 1 receptor
antagonists in the treatment of hypertension and heart
failure and for renal protection. This is to a large measure the legacy
of Dr Alberto C. Taquini and his coworkers.
Nidia Basso, MD
Centro de Investigaciones Cardiológicas
University of Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Ernesto L. Schiffrin, MD, PhD, FRCPC
Clinical Research Institute
University of Montreal
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
(Editor's Note. Dr Basso was a longtime collaborator
of Dr A.C. Taquini and of his son, the late Professor Carlos M.
Taquini, and is an investigator at the Centro de Investigaciones
Cardiológicas of the University of Buenos Aires School of
Medicine. Dr Schiffrin is Professor of Medicine, University of
Montreal, Director, MRC Multidisciplinary Research Group on
Hypertension at the Clinical Research Institute of Montreal, and a
member of the Division of Internal Medicine at the University of
Montreal Hospital Center. He also trained and was an instructor in the
late 1960s in the Department of Physiology headed by Dr Taquini.)
References
1.
Goldblatt H, Lynch J, Hanzal RF, Summerville WW.
Studies on experimental hypertension: the production of
persistent elevation of systolic blood pressure by means of
renal ischemia. J Exp Med.. 1934;59:347.[Abstract]
2.
Houssay BA, Fasciolo JC. Secreción hipertensora
del riñón isquemiado. Rev Soc Argent Biol.. 1937;13:284.
3.
Houssay BA, Taquini AC. Acción vasoconstrictora de
la sangre venosa del riñón isquemiado. Rev Soc Argent
Biol.. 1938;14:5.
4.
Braun-Menéndez E, Fasciolo JC, Leloir LF,
Muñoz JM. La substancia hipertensora de la sangre del
riñón isquemiado. Rev Soc Argent Biol.. 1939;15:420.
5.
Braun-Menéndez E, Fasciolo JC, Leloir LF,
Muñoz JM. The substance causing renal hypertension. J
Physiol.. 1940;98:283.
6.
Page IH, Helmer OM. A crystalline pressor substance,
angiotonin, resulting from the reaction between renin and renin
activator. Proc Soc Clin Invest.. 1939;12:17.
7.
Page IH, Helmer OM. A crystalline pressor substance,
angiotonin, resulting from the reaction between renin and renin
activator. J Exp Med.. 1940;71:29.[Abstract]
8.
Braun-Menéndez E, Fasciolo JC, Leloir LF,
Muñoz JM, Taquini AC. Hipertensión
Arterial Nefrógena. Buenos Aires, Argentina: El
Ateneo; 1943.
