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Charles Pecher
Charles Pecher (26 November 1913 – 28 August 1941) was a Belgian pioneer in nuclear medicine. He discovered and introduced strontium-89 in medical therapeutic procedures in 1939.
He was the first to report a possible therapeutic role for the beta emitting radionuclide strontium-89 in the palliation of bone pain associated with metastatic bone disease. His autoradiographies of animals or organs after administration of strontium-89 or phosphorus-32 started the development of bone scintigraphy.
The groundbreaking work of Pecher was forgotten for decades due to the classification of information linked to the Manhattan project. The therapeutic use of 89Sr was only approved in 1993 for the palliative treatment of breast and prostate cancers metastatic to the bones for use in the US and became the first bone-seeking radiopharmaceutical that came into widespread use.
Born in Antwerp on 26 November 1913, Pecher was the son of the liberal politician Édouard Pecher and Emilie Speth. After secondary studies at the Koninklijk Atheneum Antwerpen (1932), he continued with a university education in both physics and medicine. He became assistant of professor Pierre Rylant at the Université libre de Bruxelles, where he specialized in biophysics. Pecher pioneered in fundamental neurophysiology through his evidence of random processes in the nervous system. He received his doctor's degree in 1939.
His medical studies were awarded the Armand Kleefeld Prize and earned him a scholarship from the Belgian American Educational Foundation to continue his research in the United States. On 1 August 1939, Pecher married fellow researcher Jacqueline Van Halteren (31 May 1915 – 16 September 2013) and the couple traveled to the US the following month.
Pecher first worked at Harvard University with Edwin Cohn and George Kistiakowsky. In 1940, he was appointed Research Fellow in the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.
After two intense years, Pecher became entangled in the Second World War. In 1940 the Belgian Government in exile decided to raise a military unit from pre-war Belgian émigrés and soldiers rescued from Dunkirk and called up all Belgian nationals worldwide to join the Free Belgian Forces. A battalion was formed in Canada from Belgian émigrés in the Americas.
Pecher saw himself faced with a choice between his patriotic duty and his scientific calling, with the complicating factor of American pressure to remain in work in a domain whose military relevance was fully recognized, with all the secrecy that this entails. In the end, Pecher responded to his convocation for the Belgian army in the United Kingdom. In Joliette, where he was supposed to board for Europe, he died on 28 August 1941. A verdict of suicide was derived from the high dose of barbiturates in his body. His daughter Evelyne was born two months later.
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Charles Pecher
Charles Pecher (26 November 1913 – 28 August 1941) was a Belgian pioneer in nuclear medicine. He discovered and introduced strontium-89 in medical therapeutic procedures in 1939.
He was the first to report a possible therapeutic role for the beta emitting radionuclide strontium-89 in the palliation of bone pain associated with metastatic bone disease. His autoradiographies of animals or organs after administration of strontium-89 or phosphorus-32 started the development of bone scintigraphy.
The groundbreaking work of Pecher was forgotten for decades due to the classification of information linked to the Manhattan project. The therapeutic use of 89Sr was only approved in 1993 for the palliative treatment of breast and prostate cancers metastatic to the bones for use in the US and became the first bone-seeking radiopharmaceutical that came into widespread use.
Born in Antwerp on 26 November 1913, Pecher was the son of the liberal politician Édouard Pecher and Emilie Speth. After secondary studies at the Koninklijk Atheneum Antwerpen (1932), he continued with a university education in both physics and medicine. He became assistant of professor Pierre Rylant at the Université libre de Bruxelles, where he specialized in biophysics. Pecher pioneered in fundamental neurophysiology through his evidence of random processes in the nervous system. He received his doctor's degree in 1939.
His medical studies were awarded the Armand Kleefeld Prize and earned him a scholarship from the Belgian American Educational Foundation to continue his research in the United States. On 1 August 1939, Pecher married fellow researcher Jacqueline Van Halteren (31 May 1915 – 16 September 2013) and the couple traveled to the US the following month.
Pecher first worked at Harvard University with Edwin Cohn and George Kistiakowsky. In 1940, he was appointed Research Fellow in the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.
After two intense years, Pecher became entangled in the Second World War. In 1940 the Belgian Government in exile decided to raise a military unit from pre-war Belgian émigrés and soldiers rescued from Dunkirk and called up all Belgian nationals worldwide to join the Free Belgian Forces. A battalion was formed in Canada from Belgian émigrés in the Americas.
Pecher saw himself faced with a choice between his patriotic duty and his scientific calling, with the complicating factor of American pressure to remain in work in a domain whose military relevance was fully recognized, with all the secrecy that this entails. In the end, Pecher responded to his convocation for the Belgian army in the United Kingdom. In Joliette, where he was supposed to board for Europe, he died on 28 August 1941. A verdict of suicide was derived from the high dose of barbiturates in his body. His daughter Evelyne was born two months later.