Jacques Tréfouël (9 November 1897,

Le Raincy Le Raincy () is a prestigious communes of France, commune in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the Kilometre Zero, center of Paris. Le Raincy is a subprefecture of the Seine-Saint-Denis departments of France, department and ...

– 11 July 1977,

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

) was a French medical chemist. He collaborated closely with his wife,

Thérèse Tréfouël Thérèse Tréfouël (née Boyer, 19 June 1892 — 9 November 1978) was a French chemist. Along with her husband, Jacques Tréfouël, she is best known for her research on sulfamides, a novel class of antibiotic drugs. Education and personal li ...

, including on the discovery of sulfanilamide.

Biography

From 1920 to 1928 he worked as an assistant to

Ernest Fourneau Ernest Fourneau (4 October 1872 – 5 August 1949) was a French pharmacist who graduated in 1898 for the Paris university specialist in medicinal chemistry and pharmacology. He played a major role in the discovery of synthetic local anesthetics s ...

in the laboratory of medicinal chemistry at the

Pasteur Institute The Pasteur Institute (, ) is a French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases, and vaccines. It is named after Louis Pasteur, who invented pasteurization and vaccines for anthrax and rabies. Th ...

. For the next ten years, he served as laboratory chief at the Institute, during which time, he was involved in the synthesis and development of drugs such as stovarsol, orsanine, and rhodoquine. In 1935, in collaboration with his wife, chemist

, and

pharmacologist Pharmacology is the science of drugs and medications, including a substance's origin, composition, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, therapeutic use, and toxicology. More specifically, it is the study of the interactions that occur between ...

Daniel Bovet Daniel Bovet (23 March 1907 – 8 April 1992) was a Swiss-born Italian pharmacologist who won the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of drugs that block the actions of specific neurotransmitters. He is best known for hi ...

and Federico Nitti, he conducted research of

prontosil Prontosil is an antibacterial drug of the sulfonamide group. It has a relatively broad effect against gram-positive cocci but not against enterobacteria. One of the earliest antimicrobial drugs, it was widely used in the mid-20th century but is ...

, of which, they demonstrated that only a portion of the substance, named sulphanilamide, was active against

streptococcus ''Streptococcus'' is a genus of gram-positive spherical bacteria that belongs to the family Streptococcaceae, within the order Lactobacillales (lactic acid bacteria), in the phylum Bacillota. Cell division in streptococci occurs along a sing ...

. The group also showed sulphanilamide's effective action against other types of bacteria (

meningococcus ''Neisseria meningitidis'', often referred to as the meningococcus, is a Gram-negative bacterium that can cause meningitis and other forms of meningococcal disease such as meningococcemia, a life-threatening sepsis. The bacterium is referred to a ...

pneumococcus ''Streptococcus pneumoniae'', or pneumococcus, is a Gram-positive, spherical bacteria, alpha-hemolytic member of the genus ''Streptococcus''. ''S. pneumoniae'' cells are usually found in pairs (diplococci) and do not form spores and are non mo ...

gonococcus ''Neisseria gonorrhoeae'', also known as ''gonococcus'' (singular) or ''gonococci'' (plural), is a species of Gram-negative diplococci bacteria first isolated by Albert Neisser in 1879. An obligate human pathogen, it primarily colonizes the m ...

, Friedlander's bacillus, etc.).Repères chronologiques / Jacques Tréfouël (1897-1977)
Service des Archives de l'Institut Pasteur In 1938 he was appointed head of the medicinal chemistry laboratory at the Pasteur Institute. From 1940 to 1964 he served as director of the Institute, while still retaining his role as head of the medicinal chemistry laboratory. He was a member of the Société de pathologie exotique (from 1927), Société Philomathique de Paris (from 1933), and from 1971 to 1977, served as president of the

Société de biologie The Société de biologie () is a learned society founded in Paris in 1848. The society was conceived during the French Revolution of 1848. The members of the society held regular meetings and published the proceedings in a new scientific journal. ...

. He was also a member of the

Académie de médecine An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

(president 1967) and the

Académie des sciences The French Academy of Sciences (, ) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific method, scientific research. It was at the forefron ...

(president 1965).

Selected works

* ''Contribution à la chimiothérapie du paludisme. Essais sur la maladie des canaris'' (with E. Fourneau and T. Tréfouël), 1930 in: Annales de l’Institut Pasteur – Contributuion to the chemotherapy for

malaria Malaria is a Mosquito-borne disease, mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects vertebrates and ''Anopheles'' mosquitoes. Human malaria causes Signs and symptoms, symptoms that typically include fever, Fatigue (medical), fatigue, vomitin ...

. * ''Action antistreptococcique des dérivés sulfurés organiques'' (with E. Fourneau, T. Tréfouël, F. Nitti and D. Bovet), 1937 – Anti-streptococcal action of organic sulfur derivatives. * ''Le Sulfamide et ses dérivés : chimie, biologie, pharmacologie'', 1941 –

Sulfamide Sulfamide (IUPAC name: sulfuric diamide) is a compound with the chemical formula and structure . Sulfamide is produced by the reaction of sulfuryl chloride with ammonia. Sulfamide was first prepared in 1838 by the French chemist Henri Victor Reg ...

and its derivatives: chemistry, biology, pharmacology. * ''Titres et travaux scientifiques de Jacques Tréfouël'', 1942 – Titles and scientific work of Jacques Tréfouël. * ''Relations entre structure et propriétés thérapeutiques des dérivés organiques de l'arsenic pentavalent'', 1942 – Relationship between the structure and therapeutic properties of organic derivatives of

pentavalent In chemistry, the valence (US spelling) or valency (British spelling) of an atom is a measure of its combining capacity with other atoms when it forms chemical compounds or molecules. Valence is generally understood to be the number of chemica ...

arsenic Arsenic is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol As and atomic number 33. It is a metalloid and one of the pnictogens, and therefore shares many properties with its group 15 neighbors phosphorus and antimony. Arsenic is not ...

. * ''Techniques de laboratoire : chimie physique, chimie biologique, chimie clinique'', 1947 – Laboratory techniques: physical chemistry, organic chemistry, clinical chemistry.Most widely held works by Jacques Tréfouël
WorldCat Identities

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Trefouel, Jacques 1897 births 1977 deaths 20th-century French chemists French pharmacologists Members of the French Academy of Sciences People from Seine-Saint-Denis