- Person
- Gertrude Elion
- Lived
- 1918–1999
- Field
- Pharmacology
- From
- American
The story
Gertrude Elion was born in New York in 1918 to Jewish immigrant parents. When she was 15 her grandfather died of cancer, and she resolved to fight the disease. She graduated summa cum laude in chemistry from Hunter College in 1937, but at the height of the Depression her fifteen applications for graduate funding were all turned down, and laboratory jobs were rarely open to women. She saved money, earned a master's degree from New York University in 1941 while teaching high school, and later began a doctorate at night at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. After several years of long commutes she was told she would have to quit her job and study full time. She chose to keep working and never completed a PhD.
The job she kept was at Burroughs Wellcome, where she had joined George Hitchings in 1944. Instead of the usual trial and error, they studied how normal human cells, cancer cells, bacteria, parasites and viruses use the building blocks of DNA, then designed molecules to block the harmful ones. Elion, trained as an organic chemist, broadened her expertise into microbiology, pharmacology, immunology and virology as the work demanded.
The results were extraordinary. In the early 1950s Elion developed mercaptopurine and thioguanine, drugs against leukaemia. Her work went on to produce azathioprine, the first immunosuppressive drug used to prevent rejection in organ transplants, allopurinol for gout, and acyclovir, the first effective antiviral drug against herpes. From 1967 to 1983 she headed the Department of Experimental Therapy.
In 1988 Elion shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Hitchings and Sir James Black for discovering important principles of drug treatment. She was the fifth woman to win the prize in medicine and one of only a handful of laureates without a doctoral degree. Recalling honorary doctorates she later received, she wrote that perhaps her decision to stay with her job had been the right one after all. New York University's engineering school, the successor of the college where she had studied at night, awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1989, and Harvard followed in 1998.
Her rational approach changed how medicines are discovered, replacing guesswork with an understanding of the biology of disease.
Why it matters
Elion's drugs help children survive leukaemia, make organ transplants possible and treat viral infections, and her methods changed how medicines are discovered.
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.
- Researchers Elion trained helped develop AZTAfter Gertrude Elion retired in 1983, scientists she had trained, using her methods, developed AZT, one of the first drugs used to treat HIV/AIDS.
- 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.
Sources
- Gertrude B. Elion Wikipedia
- Gertrude B. Elion: Biographical Nobel Prize
- Gertrude Belle Elion Jewish Women's Archive
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.