Medicinal Chemistry
Alice Ball (1892-1916)
Alice Ball entered the University of Washington and graduated with two degrees in pharmaceutical chemistry in 1912 and pharmacy in 1914. In the fall of 1914, she entered the College of Hawaii (later the University of Hawaii) as a graduate student in chemistry. On June 1, 1915, she was the first African American and the first woman to graduate with a master of Science degree in chemistry from the University of Hawaii. In the 1914-1915 academic year she also became the first woman to teach chemistry at the institution.
Ball’s major adviser assigned her a research project involving the effect of chaulmooga oil on patients with Hansen disease. Her research developed a successful treatment for those suffering from the disease. At the time of her research Ball became ill. She worked under extreme pressure to produce injectable chaulmooga oil and, according to some observers, became exhausted in the process. Ball returned to Seattle and died at the age of 24 on December 31, 1916. According to her obituary, she suffered injuries from inhaling chlorine gas during a class demonstration in Honolulu.
Source: http://www.blackpast.org/aaw/ball-alice-augusta-1892-1916
Lloyd Augustus Hall (1894-1971)
Lloyd Augustus Hall invented a number of ways to better preserve food. During his career he amassed 59 U.S. patents. Many food preservatives used today were pioneered by Dr. Hall's methods. Before his research, most preservation was done with salts and it was difficult to keep foods from spoiling without making them taste bitter. In 1932 he found a way to use a combination of salt with tiny crystals of sodium nitrate and nitrite that suppressed the nitrogen that spoiled food. This patented method of curing meats is still used today.
Hall also proved that some spices exposed food to microbes that sped up the process of food spoiling. This was contrary to beliefs at the time, which held that spices acted as food preservatives. To address this issue, Hall created a system to sterilize spices by using ethylene gas in a vacuum chamber that was later adapted by the food, drug, and cosmetic industries.
Alice Hamilton (1896-1970)
Alice Hamilton earned the name “First Lady of Industrial Medicine” for pioneering a field dedicated to public health and safety. She is responsible for spearheading groundbreaking studies into the poisonous effects of lead, aniline dyes, carbon monoxide, mercury, tetraethyl lead, radium (in wristwatch dials among other uses), benzene, chemicals in storage batteries, and carbon disulfide and hydrogen sulfide gases created in the manufacture of viscose rayon.
From 1911 to 1920, she served as a special investigator for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. She performed a landmark study on the manufacture of white lead and lead oxide, substances that were commonly used as pigments in the paint industry. Hamilton also made recommendations for safer working conditions.
Source: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/women-scientists/Alice_Hamilton.html
Percy Lavon Julian (1899-1975)
In 1935, in Minshall Laboratory, DePauw alumnus Percy L. Julian first synthesized the drug physostigmine, previously only available from its natural source, the Calabar bean. His pioneering research led to the process that made physostigmine readily available for the treatment of glaucoma. It was the first of Julian’s lifetime of achievements in the chemical synthesis of commercially important natural products.
Following the total synthesis of physostigmine and the separation of physostigmine into its optical isomers, Julian was to make another discovery at DePauw that not only would enhance his stature as a chemist but also greatly improve the lives of many. It was in the course of isolating geneserin, a companion alkaloid of physostigmine from the Calabar bean, that Julian discovered small crystals of the hydrate of stigmasterol in the acid-washed oil extracted from the beans. Molecules such as stigmasterol possess a central structural unit composed of 17 carbon atoms arranged into four fused rings that is also found in many biologically significant compounds such as cholesterol and the sex hormones, estradiol and testosterone. More generally known as steroids, these compounds cover a broad range of form and function and in many cases are of great value as therapeutic agents.
Source: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/julian.html
Charles Richard Drew (1904-1950)
Dr. Charles Richard Drew broke barriers in a racially divided America to become one of the most important scientists of the 20th century. His pioneering research and systematic developments in the use and preservation of blood plasma during World War II not only saved thousands of lives, but innovated the nation’s blood banking process and standardized procedures for long-term blood preservation and storage techniques adapted by the American Red Cross.
Drew’s interest in transfusion medicine began during his internship and surgical residency at Montreal Hospital (1933-1935) working with bacteriology professor John Beattie on ways to treat shock with fluid replacement. Drew aspired to continue training in transfusion therapy at the Mayo Clinic, but racial prejudices at major American medical centers barred black scholars from their practices. He would instead join the faculty at Howard University College of Medicine, starting as a pathology instructor, and then progressing to surgical instructor and chief surgical resident at Freedmen's Hospital.
Katie Booth (1907-2005)
From Gulfport, Mississippi, Booth developed an early passion for chemistry but had access to few resources to pursue her interest. In 1929, Booth was part of the first class of Blacks to graduate from the Gulfport School for Coloreds. Later that year she moved to Arkadelphia, Arkansas, to work for the Presbyterian Board of Education. During that time she received a scholarship to study at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas, where she earned a basic education degree in 1940.
At the beginning of World War II, she was a chemist at Doeh-Jarvis, a die casting company, and also took classes at the Damen Institute of Technology, where she received a degree in industrial chemistry after the war. From there, Booth worked in the Department of Pharmacology at the Chicago Medical School, researching preventative health measures. She was interested in children's health and prenatal care, and also worked on treatments for sickle cell anemia.
Source: https://aaregistry.org/story/katie-booth-chemist-born/
Gertrude Elion (1918–1999)
Gertrude Elion (1918–1999) and colleague George Hitchings (1905–1998) went off the beaten path of trial-and-error drug development to revolutionize drug making. Using a method known as “rational drug design,” Elion and Hitchings were able to successfully interfere with cell growth, giving way to a number of effective drugs for treating leukemia, gout, malaria, herpes, and many other illnesses.
In the 1960s, Hitchings and Elion also found more success in combating infectious diseases by targeting bacterial and viral DNA: the development of pyramethamine, used to treat malaria; and trimethoprim (Septra), which treats meningitis, septicemia, and bacterial infections of the urinary and respiratory tracts.
Source: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/women-scientists/gertrude-elion.html
Mildred Rebstock (1919-2011)
Mildred Rebstock worked for Parke-Davis Research Labs-chemistry department from 1945-77 at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 1945, she was a junior research chemist and then a senior research chemist. In 1949, she was the key member of a research team that produced a synthetic form of the antibiotic chloromycetin, used to treat typhoid fever and Rocky Mountain spotted fever. This was the first drug that could be mass-produced quickly and cheaply to work against typhoid fever and atypical pneumonia. Chloromycetin is still commercially available and is used in the treatment of diseases such as cholera and meningitis.
Rosalyn Sussman Yalow (1921-2011)
In 1977, Rosalyn Yalow became the second woman to win a Nobel prize in medicine for co-developing radio-immunoassay (RIA), a groundbreaking technique that uses radioactive isotopes to quickly and precisely measure concentrations of hormones, vitamins, viruses, enzymes, drugs, and hundreds more substances. The technique is so sensitive that it can detect a teaspoonful of sugar in a body of water 62 miles long.
As a result of Yalow’s work, many diseases and conditions can be diagnosed, treated, or tested. Children with dwarfism can be treated with human growth hormones; fetuses are checked for serious deformities; newborns are tested to prevent retardation; blood banks are screened for diseases; and athletes are tested for drug abuse.
Source: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/women-scientists/rosalyn-sussman-yalow.html; https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1977/yalow/biographical/
Tu Youyou (b. 1930)
Tu Youyou is a Chinese pharmaceutical chemist and educator. She discovered artemisinin (also known as qinghaosu) and dihydroartemisinin, used to treat malaria, a significant breakthrough in 20th-century tropical medicine, saving millions of lives in South China, Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America.
For her work, Tu received the 2011 Lasker Award in clinical medicine and the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura. Tu is the first Chinese Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine and the first female citizen of the People's Republic of China to receive a Nobel Prize in any category.
Source: https://www.lindau-nobel.org/the-modest-nobel-laureate-youyou-tu/ ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_Youyou; https://www.nobelprize.org/womenwhochangedscience/stories/tu-youyou
Jeannette E. Brown (b. 1934)
Jeannette E. Brown is an organic medicinal chemist, historian, and author from The Bronx, New York. Brown earned a B.S. in chemistry from Hunter College in New York City and later went on to earn a master’s degree in organic chemistry from the University of Minnesota, where she was the first black woman to earn the degree in that subject area. Her master’s thesis was on the topic of dyes and dyeing, entitled, Study of Dye and Ylide Formation in Salts of 9-(P-dimethylaminophenyl) Fluorene.
Brown’s began her career at CIBA Pharmaceutical Company in the 1960′s and later moved on to work at Merck. While at CIBA, she involved in research programs for drug development targeting tuberculosis and coccidiosis. At Merck, she coauthored 15 publication, obtained 1 patent, and contributed to 5 others. Brown was a fellow at the Science History Institute twice!
Source: https://othmeralia.tumblr.com/post/622266192716038144/jeannette-e-brown-1934-jeannette-e-brown-is; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeannette_Brown
Nancy Chang (b. 1950)
Through the airplane window, 19-year-old Nancy Chang watched Taiwan disappear beneath her. To pass the time on the long trip to the United States, where she was to attend Brown University, she opened a copy of The Double Helix, James Watson’s first-person account of discovering the structure of DNA. Sixteen hours later the plane touched down in Boston. Chang had made up her mind: she would study biology.
Chang went on to study at Harvard Medical School as one of the school’s first international students. She received a PhD in biological chemistry and became one of the world’s most successful biotech businesswomen after cofounding the biopharmaceutical firm Tanox (now part of Genentech), a company that sought remedies for asthma and allergies through the use of genetics engineering.
Source: https://www.sciencehistory.org/women-in-chemistry; https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26870740
Kelly Chibale (b. 1964)
Chibale grew up without electricity or running water in Mpika district, Zambia. His parents are Elizabeth Malekano Chanda and Harrison Chibale. He studied chemistry at the University of Zambia, graduating in 1987. Chibale worked at Kafironda Explosives in Mufulira. As there were no opportunities for graduate studies in Zambia, he moved to the University of Cambridge for his PhD, working in Stuart Warren's group on synthetic organic chemistry of optically active molecules.
Throughout his career, Kelly has been inspired by the use of science to support development. In 2010, he founded H3D – a centre for drug discovery which aims to bridge the gap between basic and clinical studies. He explains, “H3D is the first of its kind in Africa. It trains a new generation of African scientists with key skills and competencies in the relevant areas of drug discovery.” In addition to this, Kelly is the founding director of the South African Medical Research Council Drug Discovery and Development Research Unit at UCT. The unit specialises in the use of innovative drug discovery tools to develop potential medicines for the treatment of endemic African diseases.
Source: https://www.ft.com/content/5541440c-38ff-11e9-b856-5404d3811663; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Chibale; https://web.archive.org/web/20200929182344/http://www.rsc.org/diversity/175-faces/all-faces/professor-kelly-chibale-frsc/
Annette Bak
Annette Bak joined Astra Zeneca as Head of Advanced Drug Delivery in September 2016. She is leading a department of drug delivery scientists, formulators and analytical chemists across Sweden, UK, and the US responsible for advanced and cutting edge drug delivery of mRNA, oligo nucleotides, proteins, and small molecules. She also serves as the Chief Chemist on the AZ R&D leadership team. Before joining AZ her career was in the US pharmaceutical industry, Amgen and Merck.
Annette enjoys the opportunity to impact global and public health though innovative medicines. She has impacted numerous discovery and early development programs leading to new entities in the clinic and commercial space. She publish on a regular basis, for example on new ways to develop and deliver biomolecules and pharmaceutical cocrystals.
Source: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/acs-webinars/presenters/bak-annette.html
Donna M. Huryn
Donna M. Huryn received her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania. After graduate school, she joined the Chemistry Research Department at Hoffmann-La Roche, Inc., and contributed to drug discovery efforts in inflammation, HIV and cancer with increasing levels of responsibility.
In 2004, she left the pharmaceutical industry to join academia. She is on the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Pharmacy, and holds an adjunct appointment in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. She is Associate Editor of ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters, and on the Editorial Board of Organic Reactions. Professor Huryn’s research focuses on the design and synthesis of small molecules probes and drugs to treat cancer, neurodegenerative and infectious diseases.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Huryn; https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/acs-webinars/presenters/huryn-donna.html
Wendy Young
Young received her Ph.D. from Princeton in 1993, working with Edward C. Taylor on heterocycles derived from natural pigments, one of which ultimately became pemetrexed (Alimta), an oncology treatment. In her postdoctoral fellowship with Samuel Danishefsky, Young was among one of a handful of groups in the mid-1990s to synthesize paclitaxel (Taxol), a highly-oxegenated terpenoid natural product used to treat cancer.
Young joined Genentech in 2006, a time when the historically antibody-focused firm was trying to establish equal expertise in small molecules. In 2018, she became the head of small-molecule drug discovery. Young went from leading a team of 30 to overseeing 100 chemists; now she directs about 350 Genentech scientists and hundreds of scientists at external partners. Her team spans chemistry, drug metabolism, pharmaceutical sciences, and biochemistry.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Young; https://cen.acs.org/careers/Wendy-Young-Genentechs-new-head/96/i13
Jennifer C. Petter
Jennifer Petter was trying to decide what her next career move should be when she sat in on a 2015 conference session about small molecules interacting with folded RNA. The talk described how such molecules could interfere with the folding of RNA before it even produced a protein, possibly providing a new way to find drug targets for previously undruggable diseases. “I decided instantly that I wanted to do that because it seemed like an interesting problem,” says Petter, who soon thereafter founded Arrakis Therapeutics, where she is chief innovation officer. What made the problem interesting to her was, in large part, how difficult it seemed. “You really want to be out there solving problems that other people have not solved and blaze new trails,” she says. “Well, this was as new as they come, honey.”
Petter moved into industry in 1991 after 7 years as an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2012 she was at Avila Therapeutics when Celgene bought the company and made her vice president of chemistry.
Source: https://theorg.com/org/arrakis-therapeutics/org-chart/jennifer-c-petter; https://cen.acs.org/articles/100/i12/Jennifer-Petter-wants-to-interfere-with-RNA-to-discover-new-drug-targets.html
Linda C. Hsieh-Wilson
Hsieh-Wilson's research is at the interface between organic chemistry and neuroscience. She investigates how the post-translational addition of glycans affect the structure and function of proteins in the nervous system. Her laboratory has developed a chemoenzymatic method to tag proteins that have been appended with a dynamic form of glycosylation called O-GlcNAc. Her work with glycosaminoglycan microarrays has significantly advanced an understanding of specific sulfated glycosaminoglycans in neuronal communication, learning, and memory as well as advanced the field of chemical biology. She has demonstrated how fucosylation can modulate neurite growth and neuronal morphology.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Hsieh-Wilson; Image by: http://www.cce.caltech.edu/content/linda-c-hsieh-wilson
Nurulain Zaveri
Nurulain Zaveri is founder, president, and chief scientific officer of Astraea Therapeutics, a pharmaceutical company with a strong pipeline of drug-addiction medications and pain treatments. After she earned her Bachelor of Pharmacy in 1985 in India, she followed what was then considered to be the “common career path” for women with a pharmacy degree in her country—working in Pfizer India’s Quality Control and Analysis Department. She later attended Duquesne University, where she received her doctorate in medicinal chemistry in 1992.
In 2009, Zaveri accomplished something that most pharmaceutical scientists never attempt, let alone achieve—starting her own company. Today, six years later, Astraea Therapeutics has a drug candidate in advanced investigational new drug (IND) development and two mature preclinical programs in advanced stages of candidate selection. The company also continues to maintain its strong research focus and active collaborations in areas of central nervous system (CNS) disorders such as drug addiction and chronic pain.
Source: https://www.aapsnewsmagazine.org/aapsnewsmagazine/articles/2016/jan16/member-spotlight-jan16; https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/acs-webinars/presenters/zaveri-nurulain.html
David K. Smith
David Kelham Smith is a professor of chemistry at the University of York in England. His research focuses on nanochemistry and self-assembling nanomaterials. Smith is also well known for his education and public outreach activities, such as his channel dedicated to combatting chemistry disparagement. Smith is openly gay and has been described as "one of the most visible out gay scientists.
Smith's research group studies the properties of nanomaterials, particularly self-assembling molecular gels, which may have a variety of practical applications including in biomaterials and in the construction of molecular electronics. He became interested in applications to biomaterials after observing the medical treatments needed by his late partner, who had cystic fibrosis, and has studied the potential applications of nanogels in drug delivery.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_K._Smith; https://cen.acs.org/articles/100/i12/David-Smith-builds-self-assembling-nanogels-for-regenerative-medicine.html; https://www.rsc.org/prizes-funding/prizes/2022-winners/professor-david-k-smith/
Pedro García Barrantes
As a grad student at Vanderbilt, Pedro began balancing multiple projects, including the first total synthesis of a rare molecule produced by a marine sponge and the discovery of compounds for psychiatric diseases in Craig Lindsley's lab.
That work swiftly brought him toward his goal of inventing new drugs. He joined a team studying mutant versions of a protein that had recently been identified in the brains of people with schizophrenia. This protein, called metabotropic glutamate receptor subtype 1 (mGlu1), is normally involved in excitatory brain-cell signaling, but the mutant versions were too quiet. García Barrantes wanted to see if turning up mGlu1 activity with allosteric activators could restore the protein's function.
Data from an upcoming publication show that his mGlu1 allosteric activators have antipsychotic effects in mouse models. Lindsley thinks the molecules could spur a new wave of psychiatric drug discovery. "When we've given seminars on these, the interest from industry is just enormous," Lindsley says.
Source: https://cen.acs.org/people/profiles/CENs-Talented-12/96/i33
Shanique Borteley Alabi
Taking out the trash isn’t everyone’s favorite chore, but for Shanique Borteley Alabi, our cellular garbage disposal could be the key to fighting disease. At Monte Rosa Therapeutics in Boston, she’s developing molecules to send cancer-causing proteins to the scrapyard.
When she started her PhD at Yale University, Alabi was drawn to projects at the interface between chemistry and biology, especially those using small molecules to get different proteins in the body to interact. She joined chemical biologist Craig Crews’s lab, where she helped design a compound that targets mutant forms of BRAF, a protein implicated in many cancers.
Source: https://cen.acs.org/pharmaceuticals/Shanique-Borteley-Alabi/99/i30; https://www.acs.org/industry/industry-matters/early-career-chemist/small-molecule-proteins.html
Camille Schrier
Camille Schrier, grew up In Bucks County, Pennsylvania, before moving to Virginia to pursue her undergraduate degrees. In 2018, Camille graduated with honors from Virginia Tech with dual Bachelor of Science degrees in Biochemistry and Systems Biology, and is currently pursuing a Doctor of Pharmacy at Virginia Commonwealth University.
In June of 2019, Camille was named Miss Virginia after breaking from tradition to perform the “catalytic decomposition of hydrogen peroxide” as her onstage talent. Her unique talent performance and focus on women in STEM has sparked a positive reaction of inclusivity for the program as a whole. Camille’s story has been shared with hundreds of children and viewed by millions. On December 19, 2019, Camille earned the job of Miss America 2020 after competing live on NBC from Mohegan Sun Arena in Connecticut. A certified Naloxone trainer in the city of Richmond, Schrier will use the Miss America national recognition to promote her own social impact initiative, Mind Your Meds: Drug Safety and Abuse Prevention from Pediatrics to Geriatrics.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Schrier; https://www.missamerica.org/camille-schrier-2/