Biochemist Gertrude B. Elion was born #OTD in 1918.
Co-winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in Medicine, she developed a remarkable array of important pharmaceuticals using “rational drug design” that focused on differences in the biochemistry of healthy cells and pathogens.
It is impossible to overstate the importance of Gertude Elion’s work. Here's a list of five major accomplishments:
1. In 1950 she invented 6-mercaptopurine with George Hitchings. First effective treatment for some forms of childhood leukemia.
2. In 1957 they developed the immunosuppressant Azathioprine. Made organ transplants possible and helped treat autoimmune diseases.
3. She developed the anti-viral Acyclovir with Howard Schaeffer. Used to treat chickenpox, shingles, and herpes simplex.
4. Researchers trained by Gertrude Elion, using techniques she developed, produced azidothymidine (AZT), the first drug approved for the treatment of AIDS.
5. In 1952 Elion invented the drug pyrimethamine, used to treat malaria. Its other common use is preventing pneumonia in HIV/AIDS patients.
You may have heard of that last drug under its brand name “Daraprim.” It is the drug that was famously price-gouged by Martin Shkreli a few years ago.
Gertrude Elion retired from Burroughs Wellcome in 1983, and won the Nobel in 1988. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1990, and received the National Medal of Science in 1991. That same year she became the first woman to be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Here’s a page about Elion at the Jewish Women’s Archive (a marvelous resource), with a timeline of her career and lots of audio and video from various interviews.
Gertrude Elion's accomplishments over the course of her long career as a chemist were tremendous. Among the many drugs she developed were the first chemotherapy for childhood leukemia, the immunosuppressant that made organ transplantation possible, the first effective anti-viral medication, and treatments for lupus, hepatitis, arthritis, gout, and other diseases.
The first treatment for childhood leukemia, the immunosuppressant that made early organ transplants possible, the anti-viral used to treat chickenpox and shingles, an anti-malaria drug also used to treat pneumonia in HIV/AIDS patients, and techniques that led to the development of AZT.
That's quite a list of accomplishments.
Robert McNees