HONORING DRUG DISCOVERERS
Author:
Date: Tuesday, October 18, 1988
Page: 14
Section: EDITORIAL PAGE
Unlike some Nobel Prizes in Medicine that recognize a research milestone
but not necessarily one with direct payoff, the work honored this year
underlies the creation of medicines that fight disorders common to us all.
Though the trio of 1988 Nobel laureates in medicine are not household
names, the research world knows them -- not for a single spectacular
discovery, but a prolonged body of work over many years. Biochemists Gertrude
Elion, 70, and George Hitchings, 83, have collaborated for four decades at
Wellcome Research Laboratories in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Sir
James Black, 64, is based at King's College in London.
The three have saved, or improved, the lives of millions suffering from
leukemia and other cancers, malaria, gout, hypertension, heart disease,
stomach ulcers, herpes, the rejection of transplanted organs and AIDS. Their
laboratory research, one scientist said, has relieved more human suffering
than thousands of doctors in a lifetime at the bedside.
These researchers not only developed many important new medicines, but
also laid new groundwork for modern drug discovery.
The Nobel Assembly in Stockholm, which awards the prize, noted how the trio
went beyond standard methods of drug development: the chemical modification of
natural products. They, instead, built on understanding the fundamental
workings of human physiology.
Black, working apart from Elion and Hitchings, realized the potential of
drugs to block receptors on cells; receptors are sites that accept chemicals
which govern cell action. With such drugs, a member of the Nobel Assembly
said, Black has made the greatest breakthroughs against heart illness since
the discovery of digitalis 200 years ago. One of his drugs, propranolol,
blocks the stimulating effect of adrenaline on the heart. Previously,
drugs worked by increasing the oxygen supply to the heart. Black, instead,
decreased the heart's demand for oxygen.
Elion and Hitchings pursued research into the processing of nucleic acids
-- the complex chemical compounds of which genes are made. They found
differences in the way that normal cells, cancer cells and infectious microbes
use such genetic material to reproduce themselves.
Exploiting those differences, they were able to block the replication of
harmful cells or disease-producing organisms without harming normal cells.
They developed six different drugs against nine serious conditions and paved
the way for others, including AZT, the only drug known to slow the progress
of AIDS.
Separately, and together, the life work of these three scientists
illustrates the promise in fundamental research, pursuing untested ideas.
Gains in basic knowledge remain the wellspring for the advancement of medical
treatment.
LMCLAU;10/17 CORCOR;10/18,12:48 ENOBELS
|
