For over 30 years, Ron Thurman was an outstanding investigator in the fields of hepatic metabolism, alcoholic liver injury and toxicology. With his death on 14 July 2001, his large family of colleagues and friends lost a most productive and creative researcher and teacher.
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Ron started his career with a B.S. in Pharmacy from the St Louis College of Pharmacy and a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Illinois Medical College. He then pursued postdoctoral training with Dr Britton Chance at the Johnson Foundation of the University of Pennsylvania and Dr Roland Scholz at the University of Munich. He was recruited from the University of Pennsylvania to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1977, where he rose through the ranks to become Professor of Pharmacology and Director of the Laboratory of Hepatobiology and Toxicology.
Ron approached the complex entity of alcoholic liver disease in a focused, rational, and precise manner. Over the years, Rons body of work established key concepts that guide research on alcoholic liver disease in laboratories throughout the world. He characterized hepatic alcohol metabolism and especially the adaptive swift increase in alcohol metabolism which he liked to call SIAM. Rons seminal contributions also established the role of lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated Kupffer cell activation in the pathogenesis of alcoholic steatohepatitis. Most recently, using an intragastric ethanol-feeding model in rats and mice, Ron defined key genetic components in alcoholic steatohepatitis. Knock-out mouse and viral gene delivery studies demonstrated critical roles of the tumour necrosis factor receptor-1, intracellular adhesion molecule-1, NADPH oxidase, CD14 and Toll-like receptor 4 in alcoholic liver injury. The concept which emerged from Rons work was simple but unexpected: alcohol drinking promotes LPS translocation across the gut mucosa. The chronic exposure to LPS causes Kupffer cell activation and the release of cytokines, free radicals and other inflammatory mediators, which then culminates in hepatocellular injury and likely fibrosis as well. This concept will surely guide alcohol research for many years to come.
Ron published over 400 original research papers and many more reviews and book chapters. He also attracted outstanding graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from all over the world to his laboratory and inspired them to excellence. Alumni of his laboratory have graduated to outstanding careers in clinical and research gastroenterology and pharmacology.
Ron was an active participant in the national meetings of the American Gastroenterological Association, the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the Society of Toxicology, and most recently became an associate editor of Gastroenterology. Although his untimely death prevents Ron from pursuing the research he loved so dearly, his many students, protégés and collaborators will continue the work and inspire others to the standards of excellence that Ron not only met but demanded.
FOOTNOTES
(From http://www.med.unc.edu/alcohol/faculty/ThurmanRG/Thurmanobituary.htm)