Fritz Markwardt

Importancia para la hirudoterapia

Fritz Markwardt (1924–2011) was a German physician and pharmacologist whose career unfolded in the German Democratic Republic. After a professorship at Greifswald he served from 1961 to 1991 as professor and institute director at the Medizinische Akademie Erfurt. In the 1950s he isolated and characterised hirudin, the anticoagulant substance obtained from the medicinal leech, and he later wrote the textbook 'Allgemeine und spezielle Pharmakologie', which appeared in six editions between 1972 and 1989 (de.wikipedia; Wikidata). Markwardt returned to hirudin repeatedly in his scientific writing. In 1991 he described the comeback of hirudin as an antithrombotic agent in Seminars in Thrombosis and Hemostasis (PMID 1771415), and in a 2002 historical review in the same journal he traced the substance's development from leech extract to genetically engineered products, recording that hirudin — the most potent known natural thrombin inhibitor of Hirudo medicinalis — had seen limited clinical use because it was not available in adequate amounts, and that recombinant hirudins produced by gene technology made this specific thrombin inhibitor well suited for use as an antithrombotic drug in thromboembolic disease (PMID 12420235). A further 2002 article gave a historical perspective on the development of thrombin inhibitors (PMID 12811007).