Nature and Control of Biochemical Pathways for the Origin of Prostatic Polyamines

Abstract

Feeling greatly honored by this opportunity to join with many other of the admirers, pupils, and friends of William Wallace Scott in paying homage to his outstanding contributions to investigative and clinical urology, I would like to summarize some recent experiments on the biosynthesis of spermine and related amines in the prostate gland and other mammalian tissues. These investigations were initiated during the time I was privileged to serve under Dr. Scott as a staff member of the James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute at Hopkins. The ultimate aim of these studies—to gain insight into the functional roles of the high concentrations of spermine found in the prostate and its secretions in man and certain other mammals—has yet to be achieved. I hope the following paragraphs will show, however, that in delineating for the first time the series of linked enzyme reactions responsible for the production of polyamines in the prostate, a number of novel and previously unsuspected types of biochemical processes have been uncovered, many of which may be of general metabolic significance in nearly all higher animal cells. The findings to be presented were obtained in collaboration with Drs. Anthony Pegg, Dean Lockwood, Juhani Jänne, and Gordon Coppoc.