Oberndorfer Centennial
A History of Neuroendocrine Tumor Disease

Kulchitzky Theodor Langhans Otto Lubarsch Siegfried Oberndorfer

Nikolai Kulchitsky (1856-1925) (bottom left) of Kharkov University in 1897 in a manuscript entitled Zur Frage uber den Bau des Darmkanals (top left) published in Arch Mikr Anat described a unique type of cell of the intestinal epithelium. This subsequently became widely referred to as the Kulchitsky Cell (bottom) but is currently referred to as the enterochromaffin cells.

Theodor Langhans (1839-1915) (right) published the “first report” of a carcinoid tumor that was found at autopsy in the small intestine of a 50-year-old woman (frontispiece, above left). This report was principally a histological description of the tumor without discussion of its clinical behavior.

Otto Lubarsch (1860-1933) (top right) of Berlin in 1888 was among the first to provide a detailed pathological description (bottom left, lower background) of carcinoid tumors, reporting multiple ileal carcinoid tumors at autopsy in two male patients (frontispiece, center).

Siegfried Oberndorfer (1876-1944) (bottom left) of the Pathological Institute at the University of Munich first presented his observations of multiple “benign carcinomas” of the small intestine at the German Pathological Society meeting of 1907 in Dresden.