Gertrude Elion was born January 23, 1918 and died on February 21, 1999. She was an American biochemist and pharmacologist. In 1988, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine along with George H. Hitchings for their work together in the field of drug research (Gertrude Elion). During the 1950s, Gertrude Elion, together with George Hitchings, developed a systematic method known as “rational drug design”, for producing drugs based on knowledge of biochemistry and diseases. One of the first drugs produced by the pair was for leukemia and helped many children with the disease to survive. Other drugs they created have been used to fight malaria, infections, and gout, AIDS, as well as help with organ transplantations. Elion and Hitchings success was due primarily to their innovative research methods, which marked a radical departure from the trial-and-error approach taken by previous pharmacologists (Gertrude B. Elion – Biographical). They examined the difference between the biochemistry of normal human cells and those of cancer cells, bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens. They then used this information to formulate drugs that could kill or inhibit the reproduction of a particular pathogen, leaving the human host’s normal cells undamaged.…show more content… She investigated the purine bases adenine and guanine, which are building blacks of DNA. From observing the role of purines in nucleic acid metabolism, they discovered that bacterial cells require certain purines to make DNA. They then hypothesized that by preventing those purines from entering the metabolic pathway that leads to DNA synthesis, they could stop the production of DNA and therefore stop cell growth. From this investigation, she developed the anti-cancer drugs thioguanine and purinethol for the treatment of leukemia in 1950 (Gertrude B.
