New Laboratory Opens to Study Organic Substances

Establishment of a new University Laboratory was announced last night to make fundamental studies upon the constituents of body fluids and tissues and to extend the research upon the physical chemistry of proteins and other biological substances which are characteristic of all living matter and system.

Physical and chemical theory and methods will be brought to bear on problems related to medicine and public health. Research will center on the study of the proteins, the major structural and functional elements of plant and animal cells and tissues.

The new laboratory under the direction of Dr. Edwin J. Cohn, University Professor and internationally known physical biochemist, will be called the University Laboratory of Physical Chemistry. Related to Medicine and Public Health.

Staffed by Co-Workers

It will be staffed by many of the co-workers who have been associated with Dr. Cohn in the Department of Physical Chemistry at the Medical School in developing methods for the separation of the parts of the blood so as to make available as many as possible of its diverse collular, protein and lipid components, concentrated as specific therapeutic agents and of value in different conditions related to their natural functions.

The present group of investigators includes besides Professor Cohn, John T. Edsall '23, associate professor of Biological Chemistry, John L. Oncley and Walter L. Hughes, Jr., associate and assistant professors, respectively, of Physical Chemistry, five research associates and ten post-doctoral follows.

Group Will Be Independent

Although independent of all schools and departments of the University, the new laboratory, the first to be established by a University Professor, will be free to continue cooperation with groups within the University and elsewhere whose interests and activities converge upon the problems being investigated.

Since the beginning of World War II, Dr. Cohn and his group have worked in close collaboration with industrial laboratories producing biologics by the the new methods which have been introduced; with the Commission on Plasma Fractionation and Related Processes; with public health laboratories in improving methods for the standardization and control of biologic preparations, and with clinics appraising the newly available products.

This cooperation will continue without interruption. Under arrangements between the University and cooperating industrial laboratories, all patents resulting from such work become available as national assets, without profit to the investigators of the University.