Donald S.
Fredrickson, M.D.

Chief, molecular disease
branch, and director of
intramural research,
National Heart and

Lung Institute,
Bethesda, Md.

@ Donald S. Fredrickson possibly
has worn a wider selection of hats
than, and as many at once as,
any scientist during his nearly
twenty years at the National In-
stitutes of Health.

Beginning as a clinical associ-
ate in 1953, he rose to become
director of the National Heart
and Lung Institute in 1966. Be-
cause he wanted to stay closer
to the laboratory, he later moved
to his present posts as director
of the institute’s intramural re-
search and chief of its molecular
disease branch. The 46-year-old
physician has never regretted his
love affair with government med-
icine or his decisions to swap one
hat for another.

“T like the intellectual stimu-
lation, the enthusiasm, and the
quality of NIH,” he says. “Here
you can find an expert in almost
every aspect of biology. And one
of the beauties of this environ-
ment is a complete lack of bar-
riers.”

The small-town boy from Can-
on City, Colo., who headed east
during World War II and has
never had a yearning for the wide
open spaces since, switched from
engineering to medicine while in
the Army’s specialized training
program at the University of
Michigan.

The institute’s programs
change flexibly with new needs
and opportunities. ‘“We’re plan-
ning a new branch for pulmonary
research,” Dr. Fredrickson ob-
serves, “and that means recruit-
ing new people, assigning priori-
ties, and setting goals. As it has
done in cardiology, the institute
wants to establish a national cen-
ter for training physicians who
will think of the Iung as an organ
rather than just a bellows.”

All research is interrelated.
And the ultimate focus of disease-
oriented research is prevention.
As Dr. Fredrickson points out,
“To connect an artificial heart
to bad arteries is a costly design
for relieving the world’s burden
of cardiovascular problems.”

Atherosclerosis and its preven-
tion have occupied more and
more of Dr. Fredrickson’s own
research interest in recent years.
His earlier work included pioneer
studies of radioactively labeled
chylomicrons and the establish-
ment of the speed of turnover of
plasma free fatty acids.

 

 

 

 

In more recent years, he has
directed laboratory and clinical
research on the structure of plas-
ma lipoproteins and their role in
fat transport. From his labora-
tory has emerged a system for
classifying hyperlipidemia.

Also interested in the study of
inheritable diseases of fat storage
and metabolism, he discovered
the lipoprotein deficiency state,
Tangier disease, and a rare dis-
ease superficially resembling it,
which he named hepatic choles-
tery] ester storage disease.

The area of his deepest inter-
est is in the human mutants with
abnormal lipoprotein metabolism.
He and R. S. Lees first described
a new system for utilizing plas-
ma lipoprotein patterns to identi-
fy and classify excesses of blood
cholesterol and other fats in 1965.
With the collaboration of R. 1.
Levy, the system was refined and
has led to the establishment of
syndromes not previously recog-
nized as separate diseases.

The wide adoption of this sys-
tem for classifying not only
familial but acquired forms of
hyperlipidemia has kept the Be-
thesda group busy in trying to
simplify the methods required.

When he joined the institute
in 1953, Dr. Fredrickson brought
with him five years of intensive
experience in teaching and re-
search at Peter Bent Brigham
Hospital and Harvard Medical
School. In the years since, he has
won two major awards—the 1967
gold medal of the American Col-
lege of Cardiology and the 1968
International Award for Heart
and Vascular Research from the
James F. Mitchell Foundation
for Medical Education and Re-
search.

Modern Medicine / January 11,1971 21