8 Gerty Theresa Cori

Gerty Theresa Cori was born on August 15, 1896, in Prague. She  came from a Jewish family and her father was the chemist Otto Radnitz. Influenced by her father’s passion in the sciences, as well as her uncle, ho was a professor pediatrics, Cori decided to pursue medicine. However, Cori’s aspirations wouldn’t be met without tribulation. Given the time period and her being a woman, Cori wasn’t academically prepared to attend medical school. At the time, she had only received an education through home tutoring and had graduated from a girl’s finishing school. To compensate for this she had to spend two years making up her academic shortcomings in a concentrated study. This allowed her to matriculate into the medical school of the Germany university in Prague at 18 years old. She was one of the few women to enter into this program. During her first year, she met Carl Cori, who would eventually become her husband and scientific collaborator. World War I interrupted her medical education, forcing her to spend the following two years as a medical school assistant. Despite this, she was able to earn her medical degree.

After receiving their medical degrees, the Cori’s married and moved to Vienna to begin their careers. Carl received an opportunity to work at the University of Vienna’s medical clinic and Pharmacological Institute. Despite having the same qualifications as her husband, Gerty would only work at the Karolinen Children’s hospital because she was a woman. In 1922, the Cori’s immigrated to the United States, citing widespread antisemitism as their motivation to leave. Gerty was a Jewish woman who had converted to Catholicism upon marrying Carl in order to appease his family, but her identity would continue to make her a target Again, like what happened in Vienna, although Gerty had the same background as her husband, she was forced into a lower-level job as an assistant pathologist. The continuing trend of gender discrimination would continue into their next job, when the Cori’s moved to Washington University in St. Louis. In 1931, Gerty was given a research assistantship there at a nominal salary in contrasts to Carl being given a chairmanship at the Pharmacology Department in the same year. In 1936, Gerty gave birth to son, Thomas Carl. While they maintained their university careers, Gerty and Carl collaborated together for their research. Between 1922 and 1931, the Cori’s published close to 80 research papers. During this time of collaborative research, the Cori’s were able to identify an important biochemical process that would be named after them – the Cori Cycle.

The discovery of the Cori cycle, and the proliferative nature of the Cori’s research efforts led to Gerty being promoted to a full professor. The Cori Cycle also led to a far better understanding of, and the treatment for, diabetes. The discovery of the Cori Cycle won the Cori’s the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1947. With this, Gerty became the third woman to win a Nobel Prize in Science, and the first American woman to do so.

Despite this huge milestones, the Cori’s would soon be faced with tragedy. The same year that she was awarded the Nobel Prize, Gerty was diagnosed with myelosclerosis, a cancer of the bone marrow. Cori passed away on October 26, 1957, when she was only 61 years old. Cori’s Jewish identity played a defining part in her life. Stemming from the unbridled antisemitism in Europe, she had to immigrate the United States. Cori also faced major setbacks due to her being a woman. Gerty rarely received the same opportunities as her husband, despite being just as qualified as him. She had difficulty in finding work, and was compensated much less whenever she did secure a job. She was also excluded from much of the recognition for the work that she pioneered. Despite their work being a collaborative effort, Gerty wasn’t elected to the National Academy of Science for an entire eight years before her husband was.

Cori’s Nobel Prize was due to her work discovering the Cori cycle. This cycle describes how energy is produced from glucose anaerobically (without Oxygen). Many students in biochemistry classes still learn about the Cori cycle along with the Krebs cycle, which is the process of generating ATP which we use for energy aerobically, or in the presence of Oxygen. What makes Cori’s work even more impressive is that the Cori cycle was formulated in 1929, 8 years before the Krebs cycle was discovered. Cori was the first scientist to document the formation of ATP by determining the cycles used within our body.

Another interesting point of the Cori cycle is that the cycle is reversible. When energy is needed n the muscle, glucose is brought to muscles from the liver, which is broken down into Adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, and lactic acid in a process called glycolysis. This provides energy quickly, and so is the primary method of energy creation when performing anaerobic exercises such as weightlifting.  It was also originally thought that the buildup of lactic acid in muscles is what caused muscle soreness, but this has since been proven to be incorrect, and the prevailing theory is that micro-tears in the muscle account for the soreness. It was shown that lactic acid buildup could not be responsible for muscle soreness, because the lactic acid created from the Cori cycle was transported back to the liver, where the cycle would work in reverse. The liver would take lactic acid and use energy to regenerate glucose molecules that could be stored for later energy in a process called gluconeogenesis which completes the cycle.

The glucose that is created within the liver by gluconeogenesis is stored as glycogen, which is a long string of connected glucose molecules. However, in some people, this storage can be problematic. In some people, formation of glycogen is not performed correctly, and in some, glycogen is not broken down correctly.  Cori also studied these cases of glycogen storage disease, which is now also called Cori disease. Cori discovered four different forms of glycogen storage disease and managed to tie each form to a defect in a specific enzyme. Cori was the first person who was able to link defects in a specific enzyme to a genetic disorder within humans. Thanks to her work we have now identified 14 different types of glycogen storage disease, and almost all are treatable.

Gerty Cori’s work on glycogen and glucose greatly changed our understanding not only of how energy is produced in humans, but also the problems that can occur within the process.  Her work was largely overshadowed by her husband during her time alive, but later in her life and after her death, her work was recognized for what it was. The Cori cycle has been proven to be true, and is still taught to undergraduate students to understand how we generate energy without the benefit of oxygen, and Cori’s work with glycogen storage disease has helped us not only treat those individuals, but also taught us that defects in enzymes are the major cause of human genetic disorders. Now, studies into genetic disorders and mutated enzymes is an entire field of medicine. Cori’s diagnosis with myelosclerosis was not even enough to stop her, and Cori continued her work until the last few months of her life. Her advancements in the understanding of human metabolic pathways are unmatched to this day.