Deulofeu

Deulofeu, Labriola and de Langhe showed that /3-fagarine is identical with skimmianine (above) whieh Goto had already isolated from F, mantschurica Honda, and aeeording to Chakravarty the mature bark of the bael fruit tree, Aegle marmelos Correa, eontains y-fagarine. 

Floriani has recently examined bark from Aspidosperma quebracho bianco Schlecht f. pendulas Speg, in which he found the known alkaloids, quebrachine (yohimbine) and aspidospermine, as well as Hesse s aspidosamine, C2gH2g02N2, and a new base, aspidospermicine, Ci Hj ON, l-SHjO (1938). Hartmann and Schlittler have shown that the alkaloid vallesine from Vallesia glabra (Apocynaceae) is aspidospermine, and this has been confirmed by Deulofeu et aJ. who have also found it in V. dichotoma. Later Schlittler and Rottenberg by chromatographic analysis of the mother liquors of aspidospermine isolated a second alkaloid for which they used the old name Vallesine (1948). ... 

L. saururus Lam. Pillijanine (Adrian, Arata and Canzoneri, Dominguez ). Saururine, sauroxine (Deulofeu and de Langhe... 

Most of these bases have been isolated and characterised as perchlorates for which formulae are only given in the list when they are not the usual anhydrous mono-salts. Most of the bases are either C g or Cjs types, and in this connection Manske and Marion suggest that sauroxine may be C18H24ON2, which equally well suits the analytical results quoted by Deulofeu and Langhe. ... 

Deulofeu, Venancio, The Acylated Nitriles of Aldonic Acids and Their Degradation, IV, 119-151... 

Deulofeu, V. (1979) Chemical compounds isolated from Banistereopsis and related species. In Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs, edited by D. H. Efron, B. Holmstedt, and N. S. Kline, pp. 393-402. Raven Press, New York. 

It is interesting that he was self-taught in carbohydrate chemistry, because, at that time, no person in Argentina cultivated this speciality. In 1928, he was married to Irene Escasany, the daughter of a wealthy jeweler, and his companion throughout his life, who passed away one week after Deulofeu. 

Shortly after his thesis work was accepted, Deulofeu proceeded to the University of Munich, where he worked under Prof. H. Wieland on the structural elucidation of bile acids, a subject that had earned Prof. Wieland the 1927 Nobel prize for Chemistry. Deulofeu s stay in Germany was interrupted by a call from Prof. B. Houssay, who offered him a position as Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry at the Facultad de Medicina of the Universidad of Buenos Aires, a position that he held until 1948 as a part-time professor. 

Deulofeu s reputation as a leading bio-organic chemist was already established, when, in 1939, he was appointed Professor of Organic Chemistry of the Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales of the same University. In 1941, invited by the Committee for Interamerican Cultural Relationships, he spent almost one year in the Biochemistry Laboratory, School of Medicine of the St. Louis University, doing research with Prof. E. A. Doisy. 

Deulofeu was a member of the Editorial Board of several scientific publications, including Medicina, Enzymologia, Anales Asociacidn Quimica Argentina, Tetrahedron, Tetrahedron Letters, Index Chemicus, and Carbohydrate Research, and a member of the Assessor Committee of the Editorial Board of Pure and Applied Chemistry. 

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