Susan E. Leeman, who helped reshape scientific understanding of how the brain sends chemical signals throughout the body, did not hesitate to leave the laboratory when her research demanded it — even if it meant visiting slaughterhouses.
In the late 1960s, while running a small lab at Brandeis University, she was trying to isolate a stress hormone and needed large quantities of the bovine hypothalamus, a cow’s version of the structure found deep in all mammalian brains. When supplies ran short at a local meatpacker in Boston, Dr.
Leeman traveled to Chicago, home at the time to the sprawling Union Stock Yards, to secure fresh tissue. What ultimately emerged was not the hormone that she sought but an elusive chemical called Substance P. Discovered decades earlier but never fully understood, it was finally identified by Dr.
Leeman in 1970 as a neuropeptide, released by cells in the brain or spinal cord in response to pain. Three years later, she identified another neuropeptide. The two discoveries established her as a leading figure in neuroendocrinology. Dr. Leeman died on Jan.
20 in Manhattan, at the home of her daughter Eve Leeman, where she had been living. She was 95. Her death was confirmed by another daughter, Jennifer Leeman. Although Substance P was identified in 1931 by Ulf von Euler and John Gaddum, researchers working in London, it was Dr.
Leeman who discovered that it was a neuropeptide — a tiny, protein-like molecule released by neurons, or nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, that transmits signals to target tissues. We are having trouble retrieving the article content. Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
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