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Edmond H. Fischer, a Nobel Prize-winning biochemist who helped discover a fundamental regulatory mechanism in cells and paved the way for the development of drugs for cancer, diabetes and other diseases, died in Seattle on August 27. He was 101 years old.

Dr. The Lindau Nobel Laureates Meetings in Germany, where Fischer is a frequent speaker at the organization’s annual forums, announces death.

Dr. When Fischer joined the University of Washington in Seattle as a researcher in the 1950s, the biochemist, a scientist from the university, Edwin G. Krebs, was exploring a question he himself wanted to solve: How do muscles find the energy they need to contract?

They teamed up to investigate an enzyme discovered by biochemists Carl and Gerty Cori. Nobel shared Krebs had previously investigated the enzyme in muscle tissue, and Dr. Fischer had studied the enzyme in a potato. But while the muscle enzyme needed an extra chemical to work, the potato enzyme didn’t.

While investigating this apparent contradiction, the two scientists discovered that the muscle enzyme is regulated by the addition and removal of phosphate groups; this process was a process called reversible phosphorylation.

Many processes in cells are controlled by phosphorylation, in which a phosphate molecule is attached to a protein. Phosphorylation determines how a cell grows, divides, differentiates and dies; it also regulates how hormones act in the body and how cancer multiplies. The addition or removal of phosphate acts as a biological switch, turning on or off a variety of important cellular events. Dr. Fischer and Dr. Krebs identified the enzyme that performs reversible phosphorylation.

The discovery emerged as one of the fundamental mechanisms of cell signaling: how cells communicate with each other.

John Scott, head of pharmacology at the Washington University School of Medicine, compared the Fischer-Krebs discovery to two landmark discoveries that shaped modern science: the shape of DNA as a double helix and the gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9. “This is fundamentally important,” he said in a phone interview.

When regulation of phosphorylation goes wrong, diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes can occur. Many modern drugs try to manipulate this process, Dr. Fischer and Dr. It is based on the work of Krebs.

The significance of their discovery was not fully understood when they published their results in 1955. But over time, surprising results emerged. “It’s the key to understanding cancer now,” said Trisha Davis, head of the University of Washington’s biochemistry department. “It’s hard to imagine how someone could have a greater impact in the life sciences.”

Dr. Fischer and Dr. Krebs took Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1992. (Dr. Krebs died in 2006.)

Dr. “The beauty of science is that you know where to start, but you never know where you will end up,” Fischer said. interview With the Lindau Nobel Laureates Meetings in 2020.

Edmond Henri Fischer was born on April 6, 1920, in Shanghai, to Renée Tapernoux and Oscar Fischer. Eddy – as he wanted everyone to call him – grew up speaking French and attended a Swiss boarding school overlooking Lake Geneva. He did mountaineering and skiing there. He also studied piano at the Geneva Conservatory of Music and briefly considered a career as a pianist.

But at the age of 14 he was inspired by the work of Louis Pasteur to become a microbiologist. The decision was made in part after his father died of tuberculosis. He later switched to chemistry.

Dr. Fischer moved to the United States in the early 1950s to do research at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. But as soon as he arrived, he was offered a similar job at the University of Washington. While contemplating the proposal, he and his wife visited Seattle and saw that the tall trees and mountains surrounding the city reminded him of Switzerland. Shot down, he remembered and accepted the job.

Dr. Fischer became a full-time professor at the university in 1961 and remained attached to the university for the rest of his life. After retiring in 1990, he continued to attend presentations of biochemistry, typically sitting down. in the front row with his friend, biochemist Earl Davie, and always keeps the speaker busy.

In the 1980s, Dr. Cancer researcher Nicholas Tonks, who worked with Fischer and is now at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, said: “Even after his birthday, Eddy was still asking questions.” “And still some of the best questions in the room.”

A graduate student in molecular biology at the University of Cambridge in England, Dr. Fischer’s granddaughter, Élyse Fischer, said she admired him growing up and was unsure of his own ability to achieve great things in science. “But he never lost his trust in me,” he said in a phone call, adding that he would receive his master’s degree at the same age as his grandfather, at the age of 27.

Dr. Fischer played the piano throughout his life, often performing sonatas by Mozart or Beethoven for his colleagues and friends. played in 101 granddaughter’s wedding On Lopez Island in Washington.

In addition to Ms. Fischer, Dr. Fischer’s two sons, François and Henri; stepdaughter from his second marriage, Paula Dandliker; and three more grandchildren. His first wife, Nelly Gagnaux, died in 1961. In 1963 he married Beverly Bullock, who died in 2006.

In 2017, the then 97-year-old Dr. Fischer attended a march protesting the budget cuts the Trump administration has proposed to the National Institutes of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency. Walked with a cane, carried a sign “Ask me about reversible phosphorylation (I know a thing or two about it).”