In Memoriam

Professor Pierre-Claude Sizonenko
(1932-2023)

Pierre-Claude Sizonenko, who has recently died, had been an Honorary Professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Geneva, Switzerland, since his retirement in 1997. His career saw him play an important role as a paediatric endocrinologist and as a researcher in developmental endocrinology in Switzerland, Europe, and the rest of the world. Many ESPE members will know of his remarkable scientific achievements and visionary and inventive personality.

As an outstanding teacher, he trained many young and future doctors in paediatrics and endocrinology. He thus considerably strengthened care and research in the field of growth and puberty in Geneva.

Pierre was also deeply involved in university life, and was a member of the University Council for several years. He was very active in the scientific societies of his specialty, and organised the first joint meeting of the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society and ESPE in Geneva in 1981. He was also a European Commission for Science, Research and Development expert.

Pierre was born in Paris, France, and obtained his medical degree in 1957. He started his internship in Paris in the same year, receiving his doctorate there in 1964. He then specialised in paediatrics and later in endocrinology, becoming a research fellow at the University of Paris (1965−1967).

In 1967, he went to the University of California San Francisco in the USA to continue his fellowship, training with Melvin M Grumbach and Selna L Kaplan. The research theme was hormonal changes during pubertal development.

Returning to Paris in 1968, he got a position as a senior research fellow, before pursuing his career in Geneva. He first had a position at the Children’s University Hospital as a research associate (1969−1972). He conducted collaborative studies with Professor Paunier on the hormonal changes during adrenarche. He also developed a radioimmunoassay to measure melatonin.

Together with Michel Aubert, his longtime research collaborator, he established the basic research laboratory of the Division of Biology of Growth and Reproduction, where he trained a vast number of biologists and fellows. He further developed his interest in developmental endocrinology, as shown by his numerous publications on the ontogenesis of human fetal pituitary hormones and hypothalamic factors. He was able to initiate several collaborative research studies around the world.

Pierre became an Assistant Professor in 1972, an Associate Professor in 1979, and a Full Professor in 1982. He remained Head of the Division of Biology of Growth and Reproduction until his retirement in 1997.

He received the Bizot Prize from the University of Geneva for his research in 1975. In 1981, he was awarded the Nessim Habif Prize and, in 1995, ESPE presented him with the Andrea Prader Prize.

In addition to the remarkable achievements of his career, Pierre raised a family of three children with his wife Marie-Thérèse, who supported him with devotion.

Valérie Schwitzgebel and Raphaël Rappaport


In Memoriam Henk K.A. Visser
1930-2023

Henk Visser speaking at the 10th Anniversary ESPE Meeting in 1971 in Zürich, From left to right, front row: Milo Zachmann (Zürich), Henk Visser (Rotterdam), Dieter Knorr (Munich); second row: Henning Andersen (Copenhagen), Walter Svoboda (Vienna), Andrea Prader (Zürich). Third row, far right: Jean-Claude Job (Paris).

Henk K.A. Visser, one of the founding members of ESPE, passed away on March 25, 2023 at the age of 92.

Born 19th June 1930 in Dokkum (Friesland), Henk received his medical training at the University of Groningen medical school 1948-1955; pediatrics 1956-1960. In 1958, he defended his thesis entitled: “Investigations on the postnatal synthesis of foetal haemoglobin” (cum laude). In 1960-61, he spent a year in the United States as he was awarded a United States Public Health postdoctoral Research Fellowship for study with Dr John F. Crigler in the Department of Pediatrics, Children’s Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts. As John Crigler trained with Lawson Wilkins who had written the very first textbook on pediatric endocrinology in 1950 and who in the USA is considered the godfather of pediatric endocrinology, Henk liked to say that he was a ‘grandson’ of Lawson Wilkins.

In 1964, Henk was the first to suggest a defect of the terminal aldosterone biosynthesis in patients with hypoaldosteronism based on carefully documented observations of two newborns with failure to thrive and severe salt-loss. Many years later in 1996, the disorder was confirmed in the original patients by gene mutation analysis.

Henk was very proud to have been appointed as the first lector in paediatric endocrinology in The Netherlands in 1967, but already that same year he was called to Rotterdam to be the first Professor of Paediatrics at the newly erected Erasmus University and to head the department of Pediatrics and transform the Sophia Children’s Hospital into an academic paediatric hospital.

Henk played an instrumental role in the early development of ESPE from a small club of just 28 European friends to the current global scientific society with meetings attended by thousands of participants.

He was gifted with a meticulous sense of documenting facts and events. He was the first combined secretary and treasurer from 1965-1971 and we owe him many details about the organization of meetings, programs and speakers in the early days. The first meeting of the “Paediatric Endocrinology Club” took place in Zürich in 1962 and the second was organized by Henk in Groningen in 1963, attended by 31 participants from nine different European countries.

Henk drafted the constitution for the society which was adopted in 1965 and the name of the newly established association was to be the “European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology”. He also started negotiations with pharmaceutical companies on financing a research fellowship and suggested running various laboratory workshops.

In 1976, Henk hosted the 15th Annual meeting in Rotterdam with over 500 participants, jointly with the European Society for Paediatric Research and the Working Group for Mineral Metabolism.

Social events were a very important part of an ESPE meeting and an extensive social program always included a concert and the third day of the conference was devoted entirely to an excursion. Margreet, Henk’s wife and prop and stay for life, greatly stimulated these initiatives. He attended many Annual ESPE meetings, the last being the 50th Annual meeting in Glasgow in 2011; he was elected honorary member in 2002 during the Annual meeting in Segovia, Spain.

Whereas over the years his accomplishments as head of a large Paediatric department as well as dean of the Medical Faculty of Erasmus University Medical Center covered many aspects of paediatrics and paediatric patient care, nutrition, public health, ethics, organization and curricula of medical schools, he often claimed to be in principle just a paediatric endocrinologist.

His many students, residents and fellows will thankfully remember him as a visionary advocate of science and evidence-based medicine in paediatrics, being of service and compassionate with the ill child and its parents.

 


 

In Memoriam Dr Nathalie Josso
1934-2022

We are saddened by the news that Nathalie Josso, INSERM Research Director and Pediatrician, has left us.

She will remain a great name in medical and scientific research. The isolation of the anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH), which is a major player in the genital differentiation of the fetus, is both the result of experimental research conducted under her direction and the starting point of a clinical history that is far to be completed. Nathalie Josso devoted her whole life to it with a dual commitment always superbly assumed. It was first that of pediatrician very quickly turned to the problems posed by situations of variations in genital development at birth. She had to keep this attachment to the clinical gaze which gave all its meaning to her research. Her most recent publications bear witness to this.

While she was finishing her internship, the questions raised by abnormal clinical situations of genital development were still in this descriptive phase where knowledge of fetal development was being built. Very quickly it appeared that fetal testicular activity was decisive in two aspects: the secretion of testosterone on the one hand, but also a still unknown fetal activity that Alfred Jost, Professor at the Collège de France, had identified in 1947 by a superb experimental research. In the fetus, he had shown that the presence of the testicle "prevented" the persistence of the Müllerian apparatus.

Nathalie Josso chose to join Pr Jost's laboratory at the end of her internship. There she began a life of research that would be carried out with exceptional determination surrounded by a faithful team. The premature death of Alfred Jost left this field orphaned and gave Dr Josso the possibility of turning to research with rare lucidity. She retained her medical roots, but in the laboratory the construction of a brilliant experimental approach was to lead to the identification and isolation of AMH.

All the research steps that are necessary today to understand the molecular structure of this hormone, its biological potential and its role in fetal development have been completed by Nathalie Josso and her team. She thus opened the doors to a new and very complete biological exploration of the pathologies of sexual differentiation.

The rest of her publications resonate like a brilliant construction, using the best techniques of the moment and we understand from reading them that the history of the AMH is far from over. It is already a necessary tool for the diagnostic exploration of variations in genital development, adolescent gynecology, fertility and certain cancers.

She was an active ESPE member and was awarded the ESPE Andrea Prader Prize in 1992.

We extend all the sympathy of our community to her loved ones.

 


 

In Memoriam Dr Ze'ev Hochberg
August 10, 1946 - January 5, 2023

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Dr Ze’ev Hochberg on January 5, 2023. Ze’ev
Hochberg was a very active member of the Israel paediatric Endocrine Society and a past president
of the European Society of paediatric Endocrinology (ESPE).

Ze'ev Hochberg, Emeritus Professor of Paediatrics at the Rappaport School of medicine at the
Technion and a highly respected clinician, educator and researcher served as the Chief of paediatric
Endocrinology in Rambam Medical Centre from 1980 until 2013 and was and an active member in
ESPE until 2022.

Ze'ev Hochberg received his MD from Tel Aviv University and PhD from the Technion. He completed
a paediatric residency in Rothschild Medical Centre, Haifa and a paediatric endocrinology fellowship
in NY State University, Syracuse, NY.

Many of Ze'ev's research studies originated from clinical and bedside cases with an attempt to
understand and to extend both Clinical and Molecular knowledge in endocrinology. The broad
spectrum of his research projects included child growth and puberty, bone metabolism and steroid
metabolism. He discovered and characterized the clinical features of several new diseases. In his last
20 years he was the most eminent scholar in the field of evolutionary perspectives of child growth
and maturation.

The excellent reputation he earned among his peers and patients was legendary. He has mentored
many medical students, residents, and paediatric endocrinology fellows from Europe, Africa and
from the west bank and was the founder and past Secretary General of Global paediatric
Endocrinology and Diabetes GPED supporting paediatric endocrinology in developing countries.
Ze'ev chaired numerous summer schools, was one of the founders of winter school and leader in
ESPE schools in Africa. He established the ESPE yearbook and served as its editor-in-chief for many
years. Ze'ev received awards by several national paediatric societies, and the highest ESPE honour -
the Andrea Prader Prize.