Gertrude B. Elion - Life and Work

Life and Work

Born in New York City to immigrant parents, she graduated from Hunter College in 1937 and New York University (M.Sc.) in 1941. Unable to obtain a graduate research position, she worked as a lab assistant and a high school teacher. Later, she left to work as an assistant to George H. Hitchings at the Burroughs-Wellcome pharmaceutical company (now GlaxoSmithKline). She never obtained a formal Ph.D., but was later awarded an honorary Ph.D from Polytechnic University of New York in 1989 and honorary SD degree from Harvard university in 1998. She attended Polytechnic University of New York but did not graduate.

Rather than relying on trial-and-error, Elion and Hitchings used the differences in biochemistry between normal human cells and pathogens (disease-causing agents) to design drugs that could kill or inhibit the reproduction of particular pathogens without harming the host cells.

Elion's inventions include:

• 6-mercaptopurine (Purinethol), the first treatment for leukemia.
• Azathioprine (Imuran), the first immuno-suppressive agent, used for organ transplants.
• Allopurinol (Zyloprim), for gout.
• Pyrimethamine (Daraprim), for malaria.
• Trimethoprim (Septra), for meningitis, septicemia, and bacterial infections of the urinary and respiratory tracts.
• Acyclovir (Zovirax), for viral herpes.

In 1988 Elion received the Nobel Prize in Medicine, together with Hitchings and Sir James Black. Other awards include the National Medal of Science (1991) and the Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award (1997). In 1991 she became the first woman to be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

In Tom Brokaw's Greatest Generation, there is a chapter devoted to her.

Gertrude Elion died in North Carolina in 1999, aged 81. She had moved to the Research Triangle in 1970, and for a time served as a research professor at Duke University. She was unmarried.