Susan Leeman, 95, dies; Researched how the brain influences the body

Susan E. Leeman, who helped reshape scientific understanding of how the brain sends chemical signals throughout the body, did not hesitate to leave the laboratory when her research required it—even if that meant visiting slaughterhouses.

While running a small lab at Brandeis University in the late 1960s, she tried to isolate a stress hormone using large amounts of the bovine hypothalamus, a cow version of the structure found deep in all mammalian brains. When a local meatpacker in Boston ran low on supplies, Dr. Leeman went to Chicago, where the sprawling Union Stock Yards were located at the time, to obtain fresh tissue.

What ultimately emerged was not the hormone she was looking for, but an elusive chemical called Substance P.

Discovered decades earlier but never fully understood, it was finally discovered in 1970 by Dr. Leeman identified it as a neuropeptide released by cells in the brain or spinal cord in response to pain. Three years later, she identified another neuropeptide. The two discoveries made her a leading figure in neuroendocrinology.

Dr. Leeman died on January 20 in Manhattan at the home of her daughter Eve Leeman, where she had been living. She was 95 years old. Her death was confirmed by another daughter, Jennifer Leeman.

Although substance P was identified in 1931 by London researchers Ulf von Euler and John Gaddum, it was Dr. Leeman, who discovered that it was a neuropeptide – a tiny, protein-like molecule released by neurons, or nerve cells, in the brain and spinal cord that transmits signals to target tissues.

It was the first neuropeptide to be discovered in a large class called tachykinins.

A model of substance P, the neuropeptide that Dr. Leeman identified in 1970. It transmits pain signals from the brain to the body.Credit…Fvasconcellos

Dr. Leeman found that substance P transmits pain signals and increases the sensation of pain by triggering inflammation. Since then it has been linked to chronic pain syndromes, arthritis pain and migraines.

In 1973, she reported the discovery of another neuropeptide, known as neurotensin. In addition to acting as a neurotransmitter in the brain, it also acts as a hormone in the gastrointestinal tract, inhibiting stomach acid after meals while stimulating the flow of pancreatic secretions. Both from Dr. Leeman discovered neuropeptides have several complex functions.

Neuroendocrinology was a field that was just emerging in the mid-1950s when she began her doctoral studies at Harvard University, but it was her first choice as a focus.

“I was particularly interested in questions of the mind-body bridge,” she wrote in her 2008 entry in the sixth volume of “The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography,” a series that focuses on pioneers in the field. “I was fascinated by the idea that some specialized nerve cells in selected locations in the brain function not only as nerve cells but also as endocrine cells.”

The discipline of neuroendocrinology, she wrote, also offers insights into how “emotions, thoughts, and feelings can travel through the central nervous system and connect with the pituitary gland to regulate the release of many hormones.”

In 1952, Dr. Leeman was one of four women who began graduate studies in Harvard’s medical sciences program. But she was the only one to earn both a master’s degree and a doctorate and pursue a scientific career. In her autobiography, she described how the others had given in to the pressure they all felt to leave the male-dominated graduate program. At the time, most of the university’s female graduates received their degrees from Harvard’s affiliated women’s division, Radcliffe College.

Finding permanent academic employment in a time of blatant sexism proved even more difficult. It took 22 years for Dr. Leeman received a permanent position at the university after her doctorate, despite two major discoveries in her field, she said in a 1993 interview with The Scientist.

“Women actually have it harder than men,” she told the magazine.

After receiving her doctorate in 1958, she went to Harvard Medical School as a lecturer, but left the following year and moved to Brandeis, where she received slightly higher salaries.

“I stayed there for the next 12 years,” said Dr. Leeman of The Scientist magazine. “They called me an associate professor and then an assistant professor, but I never got a full faculty position.”

When she returned to Harvard Medical School in 1972, it was “one of the worst chapters of her career,” her daughter Eve, a psychiatrist, said in an interview. “She was hired with the prospect of a permanent position, but when she got there she faced enormous discrimination.”

Male colleagues asked her to run errands for the department to humiliate her, her daughter said.

Finally, in 1980, the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester offered her a full professorship. It was 50 miles from her home, but she accepted.

In 1992, Boston University appointed her professor of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics and appointed her head of the neuropeptide laboratory.

“She was kind of an activist,” Dr. Eve Leeman. “She cared about social justice and always worked for good.”

Dr. Leeman in 2010. “Women actually have it harder than men,” she told The Scientist magazine, describing the challenges of working in the emerging field of neuroendocrinology in the mid-20th century.Credit…Vernon Doucette/Boston University School of Medicine

Susan Epstein was born in Chicago on May 9, 1930, one of two children of Samuel and Dora (Gubernikoff) Epstein. Her father, a graduate of the City University of New York, worked as a metallurgist for the US Steel Corporation; Her mother, who graduated from George Washington University, ran the home.

In 1936 the family moved to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where her father joined Bethlehem Steel. Susan grew up in this industrial town anchored by the company’s 1,800-acre campus.

After graduating from Liberty High School in Bethlehem in 1947, she attended Goucher College in Maryland, earning a bachelor’s degree in physiology in 1951.

While pursuing her doctorate at Harvard, she met a medical student there, Cavin Leeman; They married in 1957.

In addition to her daughters, Dr. Leeman a son, Raphael, Jennifer’s twin; and five grandchildren. Their marriage ended in divorce in the 1980s.

Dr. Leeman received dozens of awards. In 1987, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which honors exceptional achievements. In 1991, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, becoming the first woman to receive this honor in the disciplines of physiology and pharmacology. Two years later she received the Excellence in Science Award from the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

Dr. Leeman’s curiosity never waned and “she retired incredibly late” – at almost 90, said her daughter Jennifer. “She had a very long career and loved thinking about science and all the experiments she could do.”