European Heart Journal, Volume 31, Issue 11, Pp.1291-1292

Pioneers in cardiology: Harald Reuter#

The discovery of calcium ion channels in the heart was a landmark for the worldwide development of cardiovascular drugs

The breakthrough of Reuter as a leader in the science of excitable tissues came with a work published in the Journal of Physiology (1967)[1] and carried out at the Department of Physiology of the University of Bern, Switzerland. Reuter demonstrated, for the first time, the existence of an inward current carried by Calcium ions in cardiac Purkinje fibres. This work represents a basic element for our understanding of the effect of the autonomous nervous system on the heart and of a worldwide development of drugs that nowadays play a crucial role in the treatment of cardiac failure and arterial hypertension. Just a year later, in 1968,[2] Reuter and Seitz demonstrated the existence of a Na+/Ca2+ exchange mechanism, a further key element in the regulation of cardiac intracellular Ca2+ homeostasis and contraction. The biophysical behaviour and molecular nature of Ca2+ currents flowing in cardiac and neuronal tissue remained the main interest of Reuter's scientific work. He was one of the first to apply the techniques of patch clamp to heart tissue, and he described the mechanisms of modulation of Ca2+ inward current by calmodulin, in a paper that was published in Nature (1999). During his stay at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota, Beeler and Reuter developed a theoretical model of the cardiac action potential using a parametric description of membrane ion currents based on the algorithms by Hodkin and Huxley.[3] Besides the discovery of the Ca2+ inward current, this work is one of the most cited papers in cardiac research and became the basis of cardiac computational science that has evolved to a discipline needed to explain the complexities of non-linear interactions of multiple molecular functions.

Reuter was born in 1934 in Düsseldorf, Germany. He studied at the Medical Schools of the University of Freiburg (Germany) and Innsbruck (Austria) and wrote his MD thesis in Mainz, Germany. Subsequently, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Pharmacology at Mainz University, and became Privatdozent at the same University in 1965. From 1967 to 1968, he was Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota/Mayo Clinic. In 1969, he became Professor at the Department of Pharmacology, University of Bern, Switzerland and was nominated Chairman in 1972. He remained there until becoming Emeritus Professor in 1999. Dr. Reuter was Visiting Professor at numerous International Academic Institutions, such as Yale University, British Council, Biocenter Basel, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Peking University and Standford University, Paolo Alto, USA and he was honoured with many prestigious International Scientific Awards and Memberships, such as ‘Foreign Associate of the National Academy of sciences, USA’ in 1997 and the ‘Ernst Jung Medal’ in 2002. During his academic life, the strong leadership as a public servant and the precious advice of Reuter was greatly respected in numerous important scientific, academic, and social institutions.

André G. Kléber Department of Physiology, Bern University, Switzerland

References

[1]] Reuter H. The dependence of slow inward current in Purkinje fibres on the extracellular calcium-concentration. J Physiol 1967;192:479-492. Abstract/FREE Full Text

[2] Reuter H, Seitz N. The dependence of calcium efflux from cardiac muscle on temperature and external ion composition. J Physiol 1968;195:451-470. Abstract/FREE Full Text

[3] Beeler GW, Reuter H. Reconstruction of the action potential of ventricular myocardial fibres. J Physiol 1977268:177-210.