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Passion for science: A tribute to Dr. Salih Wakil

by Ruth SoRelle, MPH

Dr. Salih Wakil, in 2005 and in 1972

At a 1971 dinner hosted by Dr. Michael E. DeBakey, then president of Baylor College of Medicine, the newly named chairman and professor of biochemistry stood up and promised to build a department that was "second to none."

Today, Dr. Salih Wakil's eyes twinkle a little as he remembers that brash statement. "I hope I didn't disappoint anyone," he said.

The Verna and Marrs McLean Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology is a testament to the drive of a man who came to the United States on the strength of his intellect and built a legacy of knowledge about the mechanisms and regulation of fatty acid metabolism, an area that is now coming to the fore of a nation overwhelmed with an epidemic of obesity.

As two of his colleagues recently noted; "He has discovered new metabolic pathways and mechanisms and provided new targets for the therapeutic intervention in the aberrant fat metabolism associated with certain human diseases."

"He was there at the beginning of the creation of biochemistry," said Dr. Hiram F. Gilbert, senior associate dean of the BCM Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and a long-term associate of Dr. Wakil. "When he started, it was a fledgling field. He helped invent it. It's his passion. It's what he is."

The department of biochemistry is his other passion, said Dr. Gilbert. "He wanted it to be a top place, and he's managed to do that successfully. We helped out, and he let us."

His third passion is his family that includes his wife and four children.

Early education

Born the son of a shoemaker in a small Iraqi city of Hilla, Dr. Wakil said his early life was tough. In the afternoons, he worked in the shoe shop alongside his father, but orders for custom shoes got smaller when large factories began mass-producing footwear.

"I was one of the first in my family to go to school," he said. He credits his mother with insisting that he go. "I'm grateful to her for that."

Without electricity at home and surrounded by six sisters, he found it difficult to study in the house. He got up early in the morning and went outside to study under the electric street lamp. When the sun came up, he would walk around the city, reading and studying.

"I never had a desk," he said, with a shrug.

He placed third in the nation on the baccalaureate examination out of high school in 1945. In the post-World War II period, Iraq became interested in sending people outside the country, and Dr. Wakil received a scholarship to the American University in Beirut. The quality of his education in Iraq gave him a step up and he entered the university as a sophomore. While at the American University he met an American biochemist named Stanley Kerr, who allowed him to take biochemistry with medical students in his senior year. He spent the last part of that semester working in the "cold room" of Dr. Kerr's lab – an experience that foreshadowed his future.

After graduating in 1948, he applied to several PhD programs in the United States. One was at the University of Washington, which he assumed to be a premier school located in the U.S. capital.

"I was lucky enough to be accepted," he said. With a scholarship from the Iraqi Ministry of Education in hand, he arrived in the United States only to learn that a three-day train journey would take him from New York to his university in Washington State.

"I thought, 'I'm going to freeze,'" he said.

Early discoveries

In Seattle, he worked with Professor Donald Hanahan. When he finished in three and one-half years with a PhD in biochemistry, he elected to do postdoctoral training at the Enzyme Institute of the University of Wisconsin, where he began his work on fatty acid oxidation. It was there that he proved that fat synthesis is not the reversal of fat oxidation.

"We discovered that the system is different from beta oxidation," he said. He also discovered the role that biotin played as a co-enzyme in the process, the first time such an activity for biotin had been discovered.

Soon his research attracted the interest of others in his field. Dr. Phillip Handler, chair of the department of biochemistry at Duke University School of Medicine, offered him a job. Packing his wife, two daughters and all of their possession into a 1954 Chevrolet (and mailing his books), he moved to Durham, N.C., where he found his lab ready and waiting. His work with fatty acid synthesis continued at the same breakneck pace it had in Wisconsin, and he received the prestigious Paul Lewis Award from the American Chemical Society. He was fortunate in the caliber of graduate students and postdoctoral students he attracted to his work. Many went on to head their own departments and laboratories.

While he was happy at Duke, Baylor College of Medicine, in the person of Dr. DeBakey, came calling soon after the College separated from Baylor University in 1969.

Decision to move west

Hesitant about whether he wanted to work in a desert with cowboys, Dr. Wakil visited Houston and was immediately struck by the warmth and the green of the country he found. He decided to come to BCM.

"I must say, I was really happy at Duke, and I was thinking that maybe I was too happy. I wanted some challenge." Duke could increase his salary or give him more lab space, but "I thought Baylor would give me an opportunity to build a department, and I wanted to try it."

Building his department from eight people and a few grants to its current standing has been the challenge of a career. One thing that has made it easier is the constant support of the McLean family.

During his first year at BCM, he found in the department files a board declaration that named his department in honor of Marrs McLean. After Dr. DeBakey wrote a letter introducing him to the McLean Foundation, he visited the president in San Antonio.

"I told him my grandiose plans for the department in terms of faculty and students," said Dr. Wakil. When the president asked what he wanted, he said he needed $100,000 to support his graduate students.

A week later, he received a $25,000 check from the foundation and a personal $25,000 check from Verna McLean, Marrs McLean's widow. A month later, he received another set of checks from the same sources. It was an outstanding commitment in 1971.

It prompted Dr. Wakil to begin the Verna and Marrs McLean Lectures in Biochemistry, an annual event that continues to this day. The McLean family has continued its support of BCM and of Dr. Wakil. They remain good friends to this day. When Mrs. McLean died, her will left considerable support to Baylor College of Medicine as well as Baylor and Trinity universities.

Testament to success

Today the department is the Verna and Marrs McLean Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and its endowment is a testament to its success, the support of people like the McLeans, and Dr. Wakil's savvy conservation of the dollars.

"He is frugal," said Dr. Gilbert. "As a result, he has made it possible for the department to do quite well over the years."

"I have been at Baylor for 34 years," said Dr. Wakil. "That's one-third of a century." His department ranks among the top five in the nation in funding from the National Institutes of Health, and it has trained a host of researchers who have benefited not only BCM, but the world as well.

"In research, I have been very lucky to work out the mechanism of fatty acid synthesis at the molecular and gene level," he said. He was the first BCM faculty member elected to the National Academy of Sciences and has had federal grants to support his research for nearly 50 years.

Recently, he has moved his work into transgenic mice and developed the "magic" mouse that lacks a particular enzyme, making it possible for the animal to eat 20 to 30 percent more food and weigh 10 percent less than normal mice. It is also long lived.

That he has been able to coordinate administrative duties with an active research and teaching career he attributes to his able faculty.

"My role in the department is to help the faculty," he said. "I tell them, 'You are on your own. Each faculty member is a king or queen of his or her own lab – within the limits of the law and regulations.' I'm there to help them when there are things for which they need my help."

Mary K. Binford and Mary Jane Perez, both administrators in his department, help him keep things on an even keel and have for at least a quarter of a century.

(Editor's Note: On May 13, BCM plans to celebrate Dr. Wakil's career that has excelled in the laboratory and the board room. It has been a long journey from a small Iraqi city arising from the ruins of Babylon to the banks of Brays Bayou in Houston, Texas, but it has been one that has benefited him, his family, the College to which he has devoted his career and the world, with benefits derived from the discoveries made not only by him, but by the hundreds of students who have passed through his laboratory and his department.)

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