Jerome Horwitz fought cancer in the lab until 86

Person

Jerome Horwitz

Lived

1919–2012

Field

Medicinal chemistry

From

American

The story

Jerome Horwitz grew up in Detroit and was drawn to science as a teenager after reading Paul de Kruif's Microbe Hunters, a popular book about the pioneers of microbiology. He earned chemistry degrees at the University of Detroit and a doctorate at the University of Michigan in 1948. In 1951 he spent time working on solid rocket fuels for the US Navy at the Illinois Institute of Technology, a job he did not enjoy.

In 1956 he joined the Detroit Institute of Cancer Research, now the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, and Wayne State University. He stayed for nearly half a century, devoting his career to the search for better cancer treatments. His approach was to design molecules that would block the copying of DNA in fast-dividing cancer cells, and the compounds he made included AZT in 1964, which failed against cancer but later became the first HIV treatment.

He never earned money from AZT, though the company that marketed it funded a chair in his name at Wayne State. He never stopped working either. In his eighties he shared in a five-year, $900,000 grant from the National Cancer Institute to refine drugs capable of treating solid tumours, work that brought him his first royalty cheque at the age of 86. He retired from Wayne State in 2005 at that age, as emeritus professor of internal medicine in the division of oncology.

Over his career he published more than 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals as well as several book chapters. His honours included Michigan Scientist of the Year in 1993, election to the Wayne State University Academy of Scholars that same year, the university's Distinguished Service Award in 1995, Michiganian of the Year from The Detroit News in 2000 and an Outstanding Achievement Award from the University of Michigan for the synthesis of AZT. People magazine named him one of the 25 most intriguing people of 1986.

Paul Volberding, director of the AIDS Research Institute at the University of California, San Francisco, said Horwitz's work had dramatically accelerated the development of antiretroviral drugs. Horwitz died in September 2012 at 93, and the Jerome R. Horwitz Fund for AIDS research continues in his name.

Why it matters

Horwitz's long career of patient, publicly funded research produced medicines and laboratory tools that have helped people far beyond his Detroit laboratory, and it showed that a scientist's most important work can come to fruition decades later.

About Jerome Horwitz

Detroit chemist who made AZT in 1964 as a cancer drug that failed, two decades later it became the first approved treatment for HIV/AIDS, though he never earned a cent from it.

More about Jerome Horwitz

• Jerome Horwitz made AZT, the first HIV treatmentIn 1964 Detroit chemist Jerome Horwitz synthesised AZT as a possible cancer drug; in 1987 it became the first approved treatment for HIV, and he also first made two more HIV drugs.
• Horwitz's ddC became one of the first HIV drugsDideoxycytidine (ddC), first made in Jerome Horwitz's lab in the 1960s, was approved by the FDA in 1992 as one of the earliest HIV/AIDS treatments.
• Jerome Horwitz designed 'fraudulent' DNA building blocksIn the early 1960s Jerome Horwitz rejected random drug screening and designed 'fraudulent nucleosides' to trick cells into stopping DNA copying.
• Horwitz's stavudine treated HIV in poorer countriesStavudine (d4T), first created by Jerome Horwitz in the 1960s, was approved for HIV in 1994 and became widely used in developing countries for its low cost.
• Jerome Horwitz made X-gal, a staple of genetics labsIn 1964 Jerome Horwitz and colleagues first made X-gal, the compound that turns bacteria blue and lets biologists spot engineered DNA at a glance.

Sources

• AIDS drug AZT inventor and famed cancer scientist Jerome Horwitz dies at 93 Wayne State University
• Billions from drug bypassed creator InvestSmart (obituary reprint)

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.