- Person
- Gertrude Elion
- Lived
- 1918–1999
- Field
- Pharmacology
- From
- American
The story
From 1967 to 1983 Gertrude Elion headed the Department of Experimental Therapy at Burroughs Wellcome. In her Nobel autobiography she recalled that colleagues called it a mini-institute, with sections for chemistry, enzymology, pharmacology, immunology and virology as well as a tissue culture laboratory, so that every stage of drug discovery could be coordinated under one roof. Her group's success with acyclovir, described in 1977, had shown that a virus could be stopped by a carefully designed molecule.
Elion also shaped the people around her. The Jewish Women's Archive notes that she encouraged the scientists under her to publish and made sure they received credit for their work, instead of taking it herself as head of the laboratory.
When the AIDS epidemic emerged in the early 1980s, that expertise was ready. In June 1984, the year after Elion retired, the virologist Marty St. Clair set up a programme at Burroughs Wellcome to find drugs that could block HIV. Janet Rideout chose AZT, a compound first made by Jerome Horwitz in 1964, as one of eleven candidates sent to the National Cancer Institute for testing. In February 1985 scientists there, including Samuel Broder, Hiroaki Mitsuya and Robert Yarchoan, found that AZT was potently effective against the virus in the laboratory.
On 20 March 1987 the US Food and Drug Administration approved AZT, under the name zidovudine, for the treatment of HIV and AIDS. The Nobel Assembly, awarding Elion and Hitchings their prize in 1988, noted that AZT had been described by other scientists from the same institute as a recent application of their research ideas.
Elion was no longer running the department by then, but accounts of her career, including the Jewish Women's Archive, credit the techniques she developed, and the people she had trained, as part of the foundation for that advance. The rapid arrival of a first AIDS treatment showed how a culture of rational drug design could respond quickly to a new disease.
Why it matters
The rapid arrival of a first AIDS treatment owed much to the antiviral know-how built up in Elion's department over the previous decade.
About Gertrude Elion
Chemist without a doctorate who pioneered rational drug design and created drugs for leukaemia, transplants, gout and herpes, sharing the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
More about Gertrude Elion
- Gertrude Elion's 6-MP gave children with leukaemia a chanceIn the early 1950s Gertrude Elion synthesised 6-mercaptopurine, one of the first effective drugs against acute leukaemia, then almost always fatal in children.
- Elion's team created acyclovir, a pioneering antiviralIn the 1970s Gertrude Elion's group developed acyclovir, the first selective and effective antiviral drug, which attacks herpes viruses while sparing healthy cells.
- Gertrude Elion's allopurinol still treats gout todayAllopurinol, developed in Gertrude Elion's laboratory, blocks the build-up of uric acid and remains a mainstay treatment for gout.
- Elion's azathioprine made kidney transplants workableGertrude Elion's laboratory produced azathioprine, the first widely used drug to stop the body rejecting a transplanted kidney from an unrelated donor.
- Elion's chemistry also fought malaria and infectionsGertrude Elion's work with George Hitchings contributed to pyrimethamine against malaria and trimethoprim against bacterial infections.
- Gertrude Elion spent her later years mentoring studentsFrom 1971 Gertrude Elion taught at Duke University, mentoring medical and graduate students and publishing more than 25 papers with them.
- Gertrude Elion won a Nobel Prize without a doctorateTurned away from graduate funding, Gertrude Elion never completed a PhD, yet her rational drug design produced leukaemia, transplant and antiviral drugs and won the 1988 Nobel Prize.
Sources
- Gertrude Elion Jewish Women's Archive Encyclopedia
- Gertrude B. Elion Wikipedia
- The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1988: Press release NobelPrize.org
- Zidovudine Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.