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Apr 2, 2014 · American biochemist and pharmacologist Gertrude B. Elion helped develop drugs to treat leukemia and prevent kidney transplant rejection. She won a Nobel Prize for medicine in 1988.
Gertrude B. Elion was an American pharmacologist who, along with George H. Hitchings and Sir James W. Black, received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1988 for their development of drugs used to treat several major diseases.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Rather than relying on trial and error, Elion and Hitchings discovered new drugs using rational drug design, which used the differences in biochemistry and metabolism between normal human cells and pathogens (disease-causing agents such as cancer cells, protozoa, bacteria, and viruses) to design drugs that could kill or inhibit the reproduction ...
- February 21, 1999 (aged 81), Chapel Hill, North Carolina, US
- Her grandfather's death inspired her to become a scientist. Elion was born in Manhattan, NY, in 1918, and grew up the Bronx with her Lithuanian father and Russian mother.
- She struggled finding research jobs. Unable to find a job in a research laboratory because she was a woman, Elion found work at a laboratory for a food company, where she performed tedious tasks such as measuring the acidity of pickle juice.
- She never completed her PhD. Elion received a master’s degree from New York University in 1941. While she was working with Hitchings, she started a PhD program, taking evening classes at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute.
- She was entirely dedicated to her work. In her own words: “Work became both my vocation and avocation.” If she did get out of the lab, she reportedly enjoyed photography, the opera, and traveling.
Dec 4, 2007 · Hitchings and Elion began investigating the purines and soon discovered that cells could not produce DNA without them. This discovery led them to pose some important questions: if they could prevent cancer cells from incorporating adenine and guanine into their DNA molecules, could they stop cancer cells from dividing and therefore stop tumors ...
She finally discovered 6-mercaptopurine (6-MP), which she created by replacing one sulphur atom with an oxygen atom. Gertrude Elion preparing radioactive 6-MP. In testing, mouse tumors failed to grow, and treated mice live twice as long as those left untreated. Children given the treatment went into complete remission, but they were not cured.
Jun 3, 2021 · Using this knowledge, Elion discovered drugs to treat malaria, bacterial infections, and genital herpes. After retiring in 1983, Elion continued to teach and mentor scientists until she died in 1999.
