Historical Tidbit: James Bertram Collip (20 November 1892 to 19 June 1965) and Parathyroid Hormone
Submitted by Alan D. Rogol, MD, Ph.D
“Bert” Collip was a Canadian biochemist who was an integral part of the team in Toronto that discovered insulin in 1922. He devised a purification method of alcohol precipitation that led to insulin crystals, leaving many of the contaminants that caused adverse events in the patients in the liquid phase (Transact Assoc Amer Physicians 1922;37:337). He later moved to the University of Alberta and in a few short years he and his team developed an assay method based on the onset of tetany in the parathyroidectomized dog and isolated and purified an active principle (parathormone) that prevented tetany in parathyroidectomized dogs and could regulate circulating concentrations of calcium (J Biol Chem 1925; 63(2):395).