Gertrude B. Elion
Gertrude Belle Elion ( born January 23, 1918 in New York; † February 21, 1999 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina) was an American biochemist, pharmacologist and Nobel Prize laureate.
Life and work
Gertrude Elion was born as the daughter of Bertha ( née Cohen ) and Robert Elion ( dentist). When she was fifteen years old, her grandfather died of cancer, after which she decided to conduct research on a cure for cancer. She completed her bachelor's degree from Hunter College in 1937 and in 1941 her Master's degree at New York University. She was enrolled as a graduate student while at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute (now Polytechnic University of New York), but has not completed. Subsequently, she worked as a laboratory assistant and high school teacher until she (now GlaxoSmithKline) was laboratory assistant to George H. Hitchings at the Burroughs - Wellcome pharmaceutical company. Gertrude Elion launched from 1966, the Department of Experimental Therapy of the Wellcome laboratories.
1983 to 1984 she was president of the American Association for Cancer Research. She received in 1989 an honorary doctorate from the Polytechnic University of New York, 1998, Harvard University.
She developed together with George H. Hitchings, a variety of new pharmacological agents:
- Diaminopurine (1948 ), a cytostatic
- Thioguanine (1950), a cytostatic
- Mercaptopurine (1951 ), an antineoplastic agent for the treatment of leukemia
- Azathioprine (1957 ), the first immunosuppressive agent for organ transplants
- Allopurinol (1963 ) for the treatment of gout
- Pyrimethamine (1950 ), a diaminopyrimidine for the treatment of malaria
- Trimethoprim (1956 ), a Diaminopyrimidin used to treat bacterial infections
- Acyclovir (1977 ) for the treatment of herpes simplex
- Zidovudine ( 1985) for the treatment of AIDS
Together with George H. Hitchings and James W. Black, she received the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of important biochemical principles of drug therapy.