Yellapragada Subbarow: The Biochemist Behind ATP and Methotrexate

Yellapragada Subbarow was an Indian-born biochemist. He spelled his name SubbaRow in the United States. He died young, and few people know his name.

Where did he come from?

• He was born on 12 January 1895 in Bhimavaram, in present-day Andhra Pradesh.
• He studied medicine at Madras Medical College.
• He went to the United States in 1923.
• He worked at Harvard Medical School until 1940.

When did he die?

He died in August 1948 in the United States. He was only 53 years old.

What is the memory hook?

Think “1895 born, 1923 America, 1948 gone”. His best work came in the years between.

At Harvard, Subbarow worked with his supervisor Cyrus Fiske. Together they built a way to measure phosphorus in body fluids and tissues. It is called the Fiske-Subbarow method.

Why did it matter?

• Phosphorus sits inside many molecules that store energy.
• A reliable test let scientists find those molecules.
• Their paper on the method appeared in the Journal of Biological Chemistry in 1925.
• Biologists around the world used the method for decades.

Whose name comes first?

The method carries Fiske’s name first. Fiske was Subbarow’s supervisor.

What is the memory hook?

Think “1925 test, 1929 discovery”. The test came first. It opened the door to ATP.

Subbarow and Fiske worked on the chemicals that store energy in muscle. They found two of them. These are phosphocreatine and adenosine triphosphate, or ATP.

What does ATP do?

ATP carries energy inside living cells. Cells spend it when they need to move, build or divide. Phosphocreatine helps refill it.

What happened in 1929?

• Fiske and Subbarow published a paper called “Phosphorus compounds of muscle and liver”.
• Medical history lists it as the discovery of ATP.
• Karl Lohmann also described ATP in 1929.
• Some textbooks give Lohmann the main credit.

What is the memory hook?

Think “1929, two names on ATP”. Subbarow and Fiske in Boston, Lohmann in Germany.

Subbarow joined Lederle Laboratories in 1940 and led research there. He directed a search for antibiotics wider in range than penicillin and streptomycin.

Which antibiotics came out?

• Polymyxin, still used today, among other places in animal feed.
• Aureomycin, the first tetracycline antibiotic in history.

Why do tetracyclines matter?

They work against many kinds of germs. Doctors have used them to treat infections for decades.

What is the memory hook?

Think “Lederle, 1940, wide-range drugs”. Aureomycin opened the tetracycline family.

Subbarow’s team made a folic acid blocker called aminopterin. Methotrexate is a close relative of it. Both drugs act against folic acid, so they slow the growth of cancer cells.

Who worked with him?

The Boston pathologist Sidney Farber worked with him on applying these drugs. Aminopterin and methotrexate gave the first remissions of childhood leukaemia.

Why is methotrexate still important?

• Doctors still use it for childhood leukaemia.
• It also treats many adult cancers.

What is the memory hook?

Think “block folic acid, stop the cancer cell”. Aminopterin first, methotrexate after.

Read further: Swarajya profile; PubMed Central article; EBSCO summary

Hetrazan is the brand name of diethylcarbamazine, often shortened to DEC. It is a drug against filariasis. Filariasis is a disease caused by worms. It can lead to the swelling called elephantiasis.

How did Subbarow come into it?

• His team at Lederle developed Hetrazan.
• It became a widely used drug against filariasis.

What else did his team do?

A PubMed Central article credits his lab with making folic acid. Folic acid is a B vitamin that the body needs to make new cells.

What is the memory hook?

Think “Hetrazan, DEC, worms”. The same drug has two names.

Four mix-ups come up again and again. Learn each pair.

What are the traps?

• Which year? The phosphorus method came in 1925. The ATP paper came in 1929.
• Which drug? Aminopterin and methotrexate are for cancer. Hetrazan is for filariasis.
• Which antibiotic? Aureomycin is the first tetracycline. It is not penicillin.
• Whose credit? Fiske and Subbarow share ATP. Some textbooks name Lohmann.

How do you remember them?

Think “test 1925, ATP 1929, drugs after 1940”. Match each year to its job.