PEDIATRICS Vol. 38 No. 2 August 1966, pp. 173-184
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PHENYLKETONURIA: A STUDY OF HUMAN BIOCHEMICAL GENETICS

E. Mead Johnson Award Address, October 26, 1965

David Yi-Yung Hsia M.D.1

1 The Department of Pediatrics, Northwestern University Medical School, and the Genetic Clinic, Children's Memorial Hospital, Chicago, Illinois

ONE of the privileges extended to me upon receiving the E. Mead Johnson Award is to have an opportunity to express in public my gratitude to the several teachers who have contributed so heavily to my development. First and foremost, I want to thank Dr. Sydney Gellis, who first took me on as a research fellow, subsequently fired in me an excitement and enthusiasm for research, and has remained through the years a loyal friend and colleague. Next, I want to thank Dr. Charles Janeway who had the vision of urging me to become interested in the then embryonic field of "inborn errors of metabolism." In the pursuit of this interest, I want to thank Dr. Eugene Knox for teaching me the biochemistry and Professor Lionel Penrose for teaching me the genetics which subsequently led to the work on phenylketonuria. Finally, the late Dr. John Bigler and Dr. Robert Lawson gave me the encouragement and the freedom to pursue these studies in Chicago. On this occasion I would also like to express my appreciation to the Mead Johnson Company for having provided me with my first fellowship, which permitted me to go into research, and also for having manufactured the product which has played such a vital role in our understanding of phenylketonuria.

The concept of "inborn errors of metabolism" was first suggested by Sir Archibald Garrod in 1908. In the Croonian Lectures delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, he suggested that four metabolic disorders—albinism, alkaptonuria, cystinuria, and pentosuria—had certain features in common.