Where is glidden soy research laboratory located

Both of these operations became hugely successful commodities for Glidden owing to Julian's work. Julian also developed fire-retardant foam from soybean protein that became known as "Navy Bean Soup" as it was used to extinguish fires on aircraft carriers during World War II. Glidden's soybean oil became a preferred product for many, and Julian also became the Director of Research for the Durkee Famous Foods Division of Glidden in addition to his other duties.

Julian built a strong research team and together they applied for more than patents. By mids Glidden's Soya Products Division had a complete line of soya products from various grades of soybean oil, soy protein, soy flour, lecithin, and five feed products.

Serendipity struck again in A plant worker called Julian to tell him that water had leaked into a , gallon tank holding purified soybean oil and a white solid had accumulated in the tank. Remembering the crystals of stigmasterol that he isolated from oil of the Calabar bean, and realizing that the extremely small amounts of sterols contained in soybean oil had been concentrated in the white solid, Julian collected and analysed it.

Soon progesterone was put on the American market in bulk at a greatly reduced cost and a healthy profit for Glidden. From this other hormones were commercialized. In , Mayo Clinic studies of the sterol, cortisone, produced by Merck at great expense using a complex step synthesis starting from cattle bile acids, was found to have amazing therapeutic attributes for rheumatoid arthritis. Again, not long after the announcement of these studies, Julian worked out, patented and published a practical synthesis of a sterol precursors needed to prepare cortisone, hydrocortisone and their derivatives.

Percy L. But to keep Julian Laboratories going, Julian once again found himself facing racial discrimination in the form of denied loans from banks. Over time the company became successful and Julian moved with his wife and two children into Oak Park, an affluent white Chicago suburb.

There his home was the target of a bomb and a fire. Furthermore, he fought with the Mexican government to win approval to harvest Mexican yams used in making steroids for his Mexico processing plant. In the end, after much work, Julian Laboratories was producing cost-effective compounds used in making many medicines.

It also opened the door for other black chemists as Julian Laboratories employed more black chemists than any other facility in the country. In Julian sold Julian Laboratories to Smith, Kline and French Pharmaceutical Company now GlaxoSmithKline for more than two million dollars, and founded Julian Research Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to training young research chemists, where he served as director until his death in In , the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp in his honor.

Acknowledgement: This document was first published in Inform , June , Volume 19 6 , pp. Because Julian was confident that his step synthetic route was not flawed he altered his fourth paper to read: "In a series of ten beautiful papers, Robinson and his co-workers have described syntheses of compounds which they call " d,l -Eserethole" and " d,l -Esermethole".

Tishler, M. Percy Julian, the Scientist, The Chemist , 42 , Witkop, B. Biographical Memoirs. National Academy of Sciences, 52 , In This Section Alton E. Bailey Stephen S. Cowan Artemy A. Meal processed at a lower temperature, as with a solvent extraction system, was seen as the solution to the problem Barnard In the depths of the Great Depression, Joyce decided to get firmly into the soybean processing business and to construct modern facilities in Chicago on the property adjacent to the Glidden paint factory, at North Laramie Ave.

The designer and consultant for the unit was Extractochemie A. Also in Glidden installed America's first full-scale soy protein isolation plant to make industrial soy protein products based on a patent by Cone and Brown and a German-built soy lecithin plant.

The lecithin was manufactured using Hansa Muehle patents. The solvent extraction plant began full operation on 15 December , followed by protein and lecithin plants in January Glidden Annual Report ; Bur?? Farmer The Glidden Co. Its first director was Eric Wahlforss. From Glidden's headquarters in Cleveland, Adrian Joyce watched the new division with great interest and W.

During O'Brien published several papers on soy proteins. Glidden was a pioneer in solvent extraction in America, and their plant was one of the first in the nation. Like most pioneers, they learned as they went along and paid dearly for their mistakes. On 7 October , their solvent plant which had been in operation for only 10 months was totally destroyed in a disastrous explosion from a hexane vapor leak. It leveled a city block, including the adjacent soy protein and lecithin plants and the nearby research laboratory, killing 11 people and injuring 45 more Annual Report ; Price and Brown ; Fortune This tragedy slowed the introduction of solvent extraction to America.

Fortunately the entire operation was well covered by insurance. After finding the cause of the accident, Glidden boldly rebuilt the crushing plant to embody the last word in safety, buying two new Hildebrandt units of the same size, plus a bank of Anderson Expellers.

In place of the full-scale protein plant, however, they built only a large protein pilot plant. By the spring of the system was back in operation. Products from the Soya Division were advertised as being used in paints, shortenings, paper coatings, dog food, confections, baked goods, alcoholic beverages, cosmetics, automobiles, packaging, and plastics Glidden In Joyce began to put together a top-flight team of research, production, and sales people for Glidden's Soya Products Division.

Many of these men made important, pioneering contributions in the field of soy proteins over the coming decades. Arthur A. Levinson, formerly with Shellabarger Grain Co. With him came Bernie Malter, a researcher from Shellabarger. Roy Brett was plant manager in charge of production for all three plants and Harold Klatt was head of the expeller group. In August by Dr.

Percy Julian was hired as Director of Research. An brilliant black chemist, with a special interest in alkaloid chemistry, he was formerly a relatively obscure research associate at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. The story goes that while he was preparing his acceptance speech, Joyce raised the ante. Julian immediately began to assemble a small group of able young scientists.

In he hired E. In Ed Wilhelm, a chemical engineer arrived. In the late s Art Levinson hired Walter Bayne, an expert on the paper industry and paper coatings from Crown Zellerbach, to head the industrial protein sales and technical service group.

Glidden was among! The company had purchased from the I. Laucks Company the rights to several of the Cone and Brown patents including the famous , patent No. Glidden's full-scale industrial soy protein plant began production of isolates in using the basic Cone and Brown process and Glidden's solvent extracted flakes.

These isolates were intended for commercial utilization by the paper and paint industries, but the process was not a viable one and quality of the resulting isolates was completely unsatisfactory.

It is not clear whether or not any of the product was ever sold. The destruction of the plant by the explosion in October may have been a blessing in disguise. It was rebuilt in as a large pilot plant and continued operation at that scale for several years making industrial-grade purified protein called "Alpha" Protein, a term coined by Art Levinson prior to mid and registered as a Glidden trademark.

The term soon became so popular in the industry, and Glidden was so careless in its handling of its trademark, that a number of companies began to write it in lower case letters as a generic term for "isolated soy proteins. From until the late s when the company was sold , Glidden was the world's leading manufacturer of isolated soy proteins. In Dr. Julian and his small research team of Meyer, Malter, and Payne began working to improve the quality of Glidden's isolates.

They worked closely with Dr. Rowland of the Institute of Paper Chemistry in Appleton, Wisconsin, on using soy protein as a sizing and coating adhesive for paper. In the team finally developed an improved process for extracting and isolating pure soy protein on a volume basis.

Late that year they began to build a commercial isolate plant based on the new process. Glidden's annual report noted that "we have spent large sums during the past year on research, sales, and advertising with the result that our products are well established in the markets of the country.

Our new units are functioning perfectly and prospects are favorable. The first isolate unit went into operation in late and began commercial production of the "Alpha" Protein, an isolated soy protein for industrial uses. George Brett was the plant manager and George Walker was the chemical engineer Glidden ; Smith and Circle , p.

The main uses of the isolate were in paper coating and paper sizing. Research continued on using the isolates in water-based paints. In May B. Roland was issued U. Patent 2,, assigned to Glidden on a process for making a paper sizing called Prosize from Alpha Protein.

In Glidden also developed its first enzyme modified industrial isolate named Mulsoya. Hydrolyzed with Rhomzyme-brand sp?? In Ed Meyer was asked to head a new research project on soy phosphatides lecithin.

Although he reported to Dr. It was sold through the American Lecithin Company mostly to the confection industry as a viscosity modifier for chocolates, a plasticizer for chewing gums, and a base for coconut-butter, which was in turn used in chocolates. In the late s Glidden became the first company in America to do research on enzyme modification of isolated soy proteins to produce whippable products for use in foods. In the company began small-scale production of America's first food-grade isolated soy protein.

A fat-free product, it was sold as a whipping agent for use in place of egg whites in confections. Its weakness was that it was not denatured by heat. If the whip was put in or on a pie then baked, instead of setting up like egg whites, it would collapse.

But it did work well in candies as a whipping agent. Over the next five years or so several tons a year were produced, largely to replace egg white, much of which surprisingly came from China in dried form. Art Levinson played a key role in advancing this modified isolate work. Ed Kruger, an old-time candy maker, was in charge of the product's sales, and it was quite successful throughout the s, in part because large imports of egg albumin from China had been cut off.

After about Albusoy was made for Glidden by Gunther Products. A Glidden ad from mid showed the company to be selling four types of soybean meal and flakes. The company was also using large quantities of soy oil in the production of their Soyalastic Paints and their Durkee's Vegetable Margarine. In the late s Glidden sold large quantities of solvent defatted soybean meal to the pet food trade, and especially to Morel, which had a large plant in Ottumwa, Iowa, making a popular canned dog food.

This was a good source of income for Glidden. To give it a unique texture, the meal was run through an expeller, which had a choke not a die on the exit end that produced a hard cake. The cake was then broken into bits to give it a texture. The textured soy protein kept its integrity quite well during retorting. Levinson and Engstrom were issued a patent on the process, but unfortunately they did not use the term "texturize" to describe their process or product. Nevertheless this was one of the earliest attempts to produce a textured soy protein product in America, a forerunner of the textured soy flours such as TVP of the s.

Being largely a commodity operation, with its main sales from soy oil and soybean meal, during the late years of the Great Depression, it operated on narrow margins and was not always profitable.

Its profits were generally below Glidden's expectations. There was a constant struggle to make money on Alpha Protein and to get it into the paper trade. The soy oil, flour and protein isolates now all began to earn good money, with the isolates proving especially lucrative.

The early s, and especially the years during World War II, was a time of great activity and innovation at Glidden. Wartime policies favored soy in both food and industrial uses. New ideas abounded and Glidden researchers were issued a swarm of patents, mostly after and primarily related to industrial applications of soy proteins, including industrial isolation and modification processes, improvement of isolate color, isolates in water-thinned paints, paper coating adhesives, paper and textile sizings, and plastics.

Patents on food-related applications included debittering and toasting of soybean meal, removal of acid-leachable soluble material, drying isolated curd, and use of water or sulfuric acid as a protein extractant Brother, Smith and Circle ; Burnett a, b. In the late s Percy Julian had become very interested in a sterol stigmasterol in crude soy oil, first reported in Germany in by Dr.

Fernholz, a researcher for I. Farben Industries. It was found that this sterol could be broken down to yield progesterone, the female sex hormone and a major building block for pharmaceutical hormonal material. Interest in soybean sterols gathered momentum and in a small pilot plant for isolating sterols was constructed and Glidden established a new Fine Chemical Division, with Dr. Compound 9 represents formation of d,l -eserethole, a key intermediate needed for the successful synthesis of physostigmine.

Despite his stunning international academic success, Dr. Both DePauw and the University of Minnesota denied him appointments because of his race. During his 18 years at Glidden, Dr. Julian was responsible for filing more than patents and increased the value of the company considerably with his inventions. In , Dr. Julian was hired as director of research in the Soya Products Division of the Glidden Company, one of the largest paint manufacturers in the United States.

His first assignment was to develop a process for the isolation and preparation of a soybean protein to be used in cold weather paints. Julian had first learned about soybeans during his training in Dr.

It was there he discovered that German scientists had used them to prepare steroid hormones eg, progesterone and in the manufacturing of physostigmine. Progesterone or progestational steroidal ketone had been discovered in along with its role in supporting pregnancy.

The ability to manufacture progesterone had obvious medical applications. Steroids are naturally produced by both plants and animals and consist of compounds containing a basic 4 cyclic hydrocarbon ring structure, cyclopentanoperhydrophenanthrene.

Therefore, Dr. Julian investigated using soybean steroids to synthesize progesterone. While Dr. Julian was at DePauw, he discovered that mixing water and Calabar bean oil resulted in the formation of steroid crystals containing stigmasterol. In a fateful series of events, water leaked into , gallons of soybean oil scheduled for use by the Durkee Famous Foods plant, a subsidiary of Glidden. Julian rushed to see the damage. He noticed there was white sludge throughout the tank, which he recognized as similar to the stigmasterol crystals he had seen previously.

Thus, he felt confident the main process for isolating steroids from soybean oil was through the addition of water. Subsequently, he devised an industrial synthesis process for converting stigmasterol into progesterone by scaling up the process developed by the German group of Butenandt and Fernholz 5 years earlier. By , progesterone produced by Glidden was shipped to the Upjohn pharmaceutical company as the first commercial shipment of sex hormones in the United States.

The development of testosterone and birth control pills were soon to follow based on the high throughput synthesis of steroids developed by Dr. Julian and his co-workers at Glidden. Julian continued his research on steroids by investigating manufacturing methods to produce cortisone.

Cortisone had recently been shown effective in the treatment of arthritis, an autoimmune disease causing the destruction of cartilage and bone within specific joints. Philip Hench, of the Mayo Clinic, presented data showing how arthritis patients responded positively to the drug, cortisone. Hench had received small quantities of cortisone that had been synthesized from the bile of slaughtered oxen. However, given the need for thousands of cattle and the more than 30 chemical reactions necessary to make a 1-year supply of cortisone for a single patient, a more efficient and economical industrial process was needed for the large scale synthesis of cortisone.

Julian became interested in making cortisone more widely available for the public. Many investigators, including Dr. Julian, searched to no avail for ways to synthesize cortisone by chemically placing an oxygen atom on carbon of Substance S.

However, scientists from Upjohn discovered a common mold that could effortlessly insert an oxygen atom specifically at the carbon 11 position of Substance S. This was the breakthrough discovery ending the cortisone shortage. Since Dr. Hydrocortisone is still widely produced today from Substance S using methodologies similar to those developed by Dr. Julian and his coworkers. While at Glidden, Dr. Julian also helped in the synthesis of several additional products made from soybeans found to be useful in a number of industrial applications.

One such product included the fire retardant Aero-Foam, which was used to put out gasoline fires and attributed to saving many lives in World War II. Other soy proteins were found to be useful in latex house paints. Despite Dr. Julian to concentrate on products related to paints. Given this environment and his competing interests, Dr.

Julian decided to leave Glidden and form Julian Laboratories, where he could continue his work making hormones cheaply and in bulk quantities. His interest in establishing companies in both Mexico and Guatemala stemmed from the fact that wild yams found in these countries contained even more steroids eg, Substance S than soybeans to be used for the synthesis of cortisone. Chicago circa In , the Julian family moved to Oak Park, an upscale area in Chicago.

On Thanksgiving Day that year, arsonists attempted to burn down the home of the first African American to live in this all white neighborhood.

Julian and his wife were away from the house. Later that same summer at a national meeting of scientists, the Union League Club prohibited his attendance because of their prohibition of African Americans. Julian was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, as only the second African American to achieve this honor. Julian overcame many obstacles in his pursuit to become a scientist and entrepreneur during an era of particularly intense racial inequity in the United States.

His imagination, love, and passion for science flourished throughout his life and led to significant contributions to public health and medicinal chemistry through his valuable discoveries in plant chemistry Figure 2. While his determination to succeed was laudable, it was his determination and success in making important, clinically useful drugs available that was most meritorious. Synthetic pharmacological agents industrially produced by use of the syntheses generated by Dr.

Corydaline and physostigmine are plant alkaloids Dr. Julian derived from the Austrian Corydalis cava and the West African Calabar bean Physostigma venenosum , respectively. Corydaline has been used to treat pain, while physostigmine was developed to treat glaucoma. Julian subsequently developed the chemistry to synthesize progesterone from soybeans on an industrial scale, making his company the first to make sex hormones commercially available in the United States.