The big story behind synthetic human growth hormone …

Editors note: This post is the first in a series about the history of biotechnology and genetics related to objects that have recently been photographed and made available for viewing online. Explore recently digitized objects in the Smithsonian-wideCollections Search Center.

What do doped up athletes, genetically modified bacteria, brain-eating diseases, and short kids have in common? They're all a part of the history of human growth hormone in the United States.

Without getting too high school biology on you, here's a brief summary of human growth hormone (HGH).HGHis secreted by your pituitary gland, a pea sized organ located near your brain. It helps with a variety of functions but its main purpose is to increase your height during childhood.

Scientists have known about growth hormones since the 1920s but only began usingHGHto treat kids who were unusually short because of pituitary disorders in 1963. Use of the drug was fairly conservative, however, because it was in short supply, due to the fact that there was only one source ofHGHhumans. Gathering the drug meant isolating it from the pituitary glands of cadavers, a rather grizzly process which is illustrated in all its gory detail (using animal glands) in theOctober 11, 1948 issue ofLifemagazine. (As a bonus, the article also includes pictures of Dachshund puppies and giant rats.)

Production of the drug in this way continued for more than 20 years. That all came to a halt, however, with the horrifying discovery that some of the drug was contaminated, having been extracted from a cadaver infected with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).CJDis similar in effects to mad cow disease or accelerated Alzheimer's, causing rapid brain degeneration leading to death within a year of the first symptoms. There is no treatment and no test forCJD, which can lie dormant for decades after exposure before signs of infection appear.

Eventually, 26 people would die ofCJDfrom contaminatedHGH. The fact that there was no way to test for infection turned the lives of all of those who had been treated in the 1960s and 1970s into a terrifying waiting game. Patients lived in constant fear of the onset of symptoms. This uncertainty resulted in another strange story when a man who had receivedHGHas a child plead innocent to charges of murdering his mother, Susan Cabot, B-movie star of films likeThe Wasp Woman,claiming he was suffering madness due to the effects ofCJD.

Following the discovery of the contamination in 1985, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration halted all distribution of cadaver-derivedHGH. As luck would have it, however, a new source forHGHwas in the hopper. Biotechnology company Genentech and drug company Eli Lilly had both independently been working on a new way to manufactureHGHusing recombinant bacteria. The companies genetically modified bacteria by inserting a gene coding for the production ofHGH. This genetic transformation turned the bacteria into little factories to pump outHGH, leading to a limitless source of pureHGHwith little risk of contamination.

Early sample of Protropin, used to treat children with growth problems stemming from an inability to produce their own growth hormone.

Six months after the ban on the natural source ofHGH, theFDAapproved Genentech's recombinantHGH, a drug called Protropin, making it only the second recombinant pharmaceutical to be sold in the U.S. In our collections we have several examples of Protropin some of which havejust been digitizedin our online collection. Look closely and youll notice the Protropin graphica clever symbol that blends a human form and an "up" arrow.

Protropin, and other brands of recombinantHGHnot only provided a safe source ofHGHfor kids with growth disorders, but the increase in supply ofHGHmeant experimentation with other applications for the hormone. One was the explosion of blackmarketHGHuse by athletes to improve their performance. In 1986,The Washington Postreported some doctors predicting that use ofHGHin athletes "could lead to the day that, instead of cheering for 'The Fridge' [nickname of 6'2" 380-pound, fan favorite William Perry, a player for the Chicago Bears in the mid-1980s], fans would be yelling for three-bedroom colonials." Though house-sized athletes never materialized,HGHcontinued to be a favorite drug for doping, particularly because it was difficult to detect in tests. Recent improvements in testing, however, may soon change HGH's place in sports. April of 2012 marked the first time that a U.S. athlete (weightlifter Pat Mendes) was banned from the Olympic Games for a positive test forHGH.

Interested in learning more about the development of recombinant pharmaceuticals and other history topics? Browse the whole group ofBiotechnology and Geneticsobjects and the rest of the Smithsonian's online collections.

Mallory Warner is a Project Assistant in the Division of Medicine & Science.

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The big story behind synthetic human growth hormone ...