Konrad Emil Bloch

Konrad Emil Bloch was a German-American biochemist who mapped key steps in cholesterol biosynthesis and shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Connect

Feodor Lynen: A German biochemist who elucidated fatty-acid metabolism and shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Bloch. Lynen’s complementary work on acetate metabolism helped reveal how cells build cholesterol.
Cholesterol biosynthesis: The multistep cellular pathway that converts acetyl-CoA into cholesterol. This is the pathway Bloch helped map, from small carbon units to the sterol molecule.
University of Munich: A German public research university founded in 1472 and based in Munich. Bloch studied chemistry there before political upheaval redirected his career.
1964 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: The Nobel Prize awarded to Konrad Bloch and Feodor Lynen for discoveries concerning cholesterol and fatty-acid metabolism. The award recognized Bloch’s elucidation of cholesterol biosynthesis and its relation to fatty-acid metabolism.
George Wald: An American biochemist who studied visual pigments and shared the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Wald’s Nobel recognition alongside Bloch at Harvard reflects the university’s mid-century biochemistry community.
Acetate metabolism: The cellular use and transformation of acetate, including its incorporation into larger molecules. Bloch traced acetate-derived carbon into cholesterol, establishing its role as a starting material.
Nazi Germany: The German state under Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship from 1933 to 1945. The regime’s persecution of Jews drove Bloch, who was Jewish, to leave Germany in 1936.
Statins: A class of drugs that lower blood cholesterol by inhibiting HMG-CoA reductase. The pathway Bloch helped establish later supplied the biochemical target for statin therapy.
Rudolf Schoenheimer: A German-American biochemist who pioneered the use of isotopes to study metabolism. Schoenheimer’s isotope-tracing methods shaped the experimental approach Bloch used to follow cholesterol precursors.
Mevalonate pathway: A metabolic pathway that converts acetyl-CoA into isoprenoid precursors through mevalonate. It contains the sequence of reactions leading from acetate toward cholesterol’s carbon framework.