NOBELIST ENTERS HALL OF FAME
Author: Associated Press
Date: Monday, August 26, 1991
Page: 5
Section: NATIONAL/FOREIGN
SENECA FALLS, N.Y. -- Gertrude Belle Elion, co-winner of the 1988 Nobel
Prize for medicine for her pioneering work in drug development, will be named
today to the National Women's Hall of Fame.
In 47 years of research, Elion has created drugs to combat leukemia, gout,
malaria, herpes and autoimmune disorders. The techniques she helped devise led
to the development of the first AIDS drug, AZT.
At 73, Elion still puts in a full schedule at her laboratory in Research
Triangle Park, N.C., where she is researching new anticancer and antiviral
drugs.
Elion, who moved to North Carolina with Burroughs Wellcome Laboratories,
shared the 1988 Nobel Prize with scientist George Hitchings, her collaborator
since 1945, and a British pharmacologist, Sir James Black.
Elion and Hitchings are credited with devising a methodical system for
designing drugs that was a radical departure from the trial-and-error approach
of many of their colleagues.
The Nobel Committee praised them for introducing "a more rational approach
based on the understanding of basic biochemical and physiological processes."
The pair designed "target-specific" drugs that attack only certain abnormal
cells and disease-causing micro-organisms in the body, leaving normal cells
undamaged.
In 1953, Elion and Hitchings developed two drugs that interfered with the
reproductive process of cancer cells to cause remissions in childhood
leukemia.
In 1957, they made the first immunosuppressive agent, making successful
organ transplants possible. In 1977, their work led to development of the
first drug used against viral herpes.
Other Burroughs Wellcome scientists used Elion and Hitchings' principles to
create the anti-AIDS drug azidothymidine, or AZT.
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