A Shared Laboratory: Sir Henry Hallet Dale & Sir John Vane

If the question was posed, what do all six winners of the Nobel Prize associated with the St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College have in common, what would one’s answer be?

They all come from Barts is a correct guess, but as fellow Barts alumnus John Watson might say, “no ****, Sherlock”. They all won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is an incorrect guess, Barts bests both UCL and Imperial by boasting a solitary Peace Prize. They are all men, also correct, also sadly true of most Nobel Laureates. Hmm… To avoid a difficult conversation, let us narrow the question: what do two of the Barts Nobel Laureates have in common? A shared laboratory is the answer.

Sir Henry Hallett Dale shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1936 for “discoveries relating to chemical transmission of nerve impulses.” Given the reason behind recognizing Dale, one might consider him to have more in common with a Barts alumnus who won the Prize four years prior. Professor The Lord Edgar Adrian won the Nobel Prize in 1936 with a not too dissimilar motivation for “discoveries regarding the functions of neurons.”

But it is Sir John Vane, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1982 (shared with two others for “discoveries concerning prostaglandins and related biologically active substances”), who made three mentions of Dale in his Nobel biographical. But why would Vane do so, given he, by this point in his career, by all accounts, had not yet had any affiliation with St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College?

In fact, Vane and Dale’s respective connections to Barts are quite the reverse of the other. Dale was born in Islington, the same present-day borough of St Bartholomew’s Hospital. He would go onto complete his clinical years at the hospital in 1900-1902, after studying physiology and zoology at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Vane was a Worcestershire man who trained as a pharmacologist at the University of Birmingham, never undertaking a medical qualification. It was not until 1986 that he would set up shop as an academic at Barts, founding the William Harvey Research Institute which, to this day, is one of six research institutes at the medical school and a continued centre of excellence for research into vascular disease and inflammation.

It is the middle years where Vane and Dale have more in common. Both working in academia within the University of London (Dale at UCL and Vane at the Royal College of Surgeons), both would be tapped up to enter the world of industrial science by the Wellcome Foundation, to work as pharmacologists at the Wellcome Physiological Research Laboratories.

In Dale’s case, the approach came from Henry Wellcome himself in 1904, and Dale would become Director within two years. For Vane, he was immediately made Group Director in 1973 at what was then known as the Research and Development Directorate. Vane noted how he was conscious of Dale’s similar position to his own; both hesitated over accepting the offer due to the advice of friends in academia. Dale was advised by his friends that he would “be selling my scientific soul for a mess of commercial potage”. Vane would say “Those friends were wrong; like Dale I accepted and had no regrets.”

John Vane’s Nobel Prize would come from work he had done earlier at the Royal College of Surgeons, identifying the mechanism of action of aspirin in relation to prostaglandins. His research also enabled the development of the first ACE inhibitors.

Henry Hallett Dale’s Nobel Prize came from his later work at the National Institute for Medical Research in 1914, where he identified acetylcholine as a chemical neurotransmitter, indicating synaptic transmission was chemical rather than electrical. Dale’s principle is used to describe neurones by the neurotransmitters they release.

But they were both the eminent pharmacologists of their day. Henry Hallet Dale received eleven nominations for the Nobel Prize between 1926 and 1935, culminating in ten nominations in 1936, including one from Lord Edgar Adrian. He also nominated his co-recipient, Otto Loewi and later, in 1945, Howard Florey, who once undertook a fellowship at The London Hospital.

Despite coming to Barts after winning his Nobel Prize, it is John Vane’s legacy as a member of the faculty which is felt more keenly today. His name adorns a building at Charterhouse Square. As a matter of fact, when attending the retirement Festschrift of Professor Sir Nick Wright, I did ask whether he was actually retiring or would just keep working anyway. “It’s like this guy”, said a senior member of staff, gesturing to the John Vane Science Centre behind us, “I would not be surprised if he was back in his office the next day”.

Hard work, it seems, is necessary to win a Nobel Prize. And here I was thinking the only thing holding me back from winning one was that it cannot be awarded posthumously.