“I decided that nobody should suffer that much.” Severely shaken by the experience of watching her grandfather die of stomach cancer, Gertrude Elion emerged from her grief with incredible resolve (“Gertrude Elion Interview”). It seemed unlikely that she, a young woman living in the 1930s, would decide to pursue a career in medical research, since this was a heavily male-dominated field (Altman). And yet that is precisely the path she chose, for she was determined to cure cancer patients like her grandfather. And, against all odds, she was incredibly successful—successful enough to earn the 1988 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Though treating cancer was her initial aim, Gertrude Elion’s work was not limited to cancer research. She developed brand new treatments for nearly a dozen different diseases, including leukemia, malaria, gout, auto-immune disorders, urinary tract infections, herpes, and even AIDS (Altman, Pietzch). The wide scope of this research is in itself impressive. Even more remarkable is the fact that she made these discoveries in the 1950s, a time when female researchers faced considerable discrimination. Gertrude Elion lived from 1918 to 1999, a period when many women struggled to achieve equality with men (Avery 163). This report will first consider how Gertrude Elion overcame discrimination against women scientists to ultimately become one of the greatest researchers of this century. Next it will explore the many various applications of the core groundbreaking principle of her research, which was the use of synthesized purines, or antimetabolites, to stop the spread of disease.

A Woman in a Man’s Field

A number of forces helped Gertrude Elion become a prolific researcher despite the discrimination women researchers faced in the middle of the twentieth century. The four most significant contributors to her success were, first, her supportive parents, second, her excellent education at Hunter College, third, labor shortages during the Second World War, and finally, the opportunity to join the lab of Dr. George Hitchings.

Gertrude Elion’s parents were highly supportive of her educational endeavors, which was quite unusual given that, at the time, parents generally discouraged their daughters from excelling in school and career (“Gertrude Elion”). This supportive home environment contributed to Elion’s success in grade school, as did her precocious thirst for knowledge. She entered college when she was only fifteen. She studied Hunter College, which then was a women’s school (Elion, “Gertrude B. Elion – Biographical”).

At Hunter College, Gertrude Elion majored in chemistry. She would have studied biology, if not for her aversion to dissections (“Gertrude Elion”). Ultimately this choice would prove very fortunate, since her chemistry major became an essential foundation for the deeply chemical nature of her research. What initially drove her to pursue such a male-dominated field was a tragedy in her teenage years: the death of her grandfather from stomach cancer. Thereafter she became determined to discover treatments for life-threatening diseases (Elion, “Gertrude B. Elion – Biographical”). Her education at Hunter College made her feel comfortable in a male-dominated field, since all her chemistry classmates were women. Since there were 75 chemistry majors in her all-female graduating class, nothing seemed unusual about a woman pursuing a career in science, and so Gertrude Elion entered the workforce undaunted (“Gertrude Elion”).

However, even the most undaunted woman would have had trouble securing a position as a scientific researcher. Throughout the twentieth century, many professional women were unable to find positions which matched their level of skill, and consequently were forced to take positions which were far below their level of expertise (Elion, “Gertrude B. Elion – Biographical”). Female academics and researchers, in particular, were relegated to the “fringes of intellectual discovery,” rather than occupying the most prominent departments and laboratories (Eisenman). Fortunately, Gertrude Elion’s timing helped her circumvent this obstacle. Elion finished her Master’s degree in chemistry at New York University in 1941, the same year that the United States entered the Second World War. As a result of the military draft, chemical laboratories experienced a shortage of researchers and were forced to hire women. Gertrude Elion worked in a number of laboratories, and gained experience that she would not have gained if not for the war (Elion, “Gertrude B. Elion – Biographical”). Finally in 1944 Elion obtained a position as a research assistant in the lab of Dr. George Hitchings, whose progressive and innovative methods of medical research greatly interested her (Altman).

George Hitchings’ confidence in Gertrude Elion’s skill and talent, despite her gender, was perhaps the most powerful contributor to her rise to greatness. As Elion became increasingly competent, Hitchings increased her responsibilities until she began to work independently. Hitchings never limited her to menial tasks. Hitchings also broadened Elion’s horizons beyond her training in organic chemistry, exposing her to microbiology, biochemistry, immunology, pharmacology, and finally virology (Elion, “Gertrude B. Elion – Biographical”). This gave Elion a cross-disciplinary approach which allowed her to think innovatively. As Gertrude Elion became increasingly proficient and creative, her mentorship under George Hitchings became a collaboration which lasted for forty years (Altman). This collaboration was the support and springboard for Elion’s original research.

Medical Breakthroughs

Although Gertrude Elion developed treatments for a wide variety of diseases and conditions, her treatments were all based on a single innovative principle: synthesized purines, also called antimetabolites. (Purines are two out of the four bases of DNA.) Three of the most significant applications of antimetabolites were in chemotherapy, organ transplants and antivirals.

Gertrude Elion discovered that one can slow the progression of diseases by interrupting the reproduction of bacteria, viruses and cancer cells (“Gertrude Elion”). She explains this process in her well-known paper “Antagonists of Nucleic Acid Derivatives.” In the paper she describes how she synthesizes purines, which cells mistake as real and then incorporate into their DNA (“Gertrude Elion”). These synthetic purines are also called antimetabolites, since they interfere with the metabolic and reproductive processes of the cells that adopt them (Pietzch). Once a cell adopts an antimetabolite, it cannot reproduce normally. If this cell is a bacterium or cancer cell, then the antimetabolite will stop the spread of infection or cancer. Likewise, if a virus incorporates an antimetabolite into its genetic code, this virus will no longer copy and spread (“Gertrude Elion”).

Gertrude Elion describes the various applications of antimetabolites to disease treatments in her seminal paper “The Purine Path to Chemotherapy.” As the title suggests, perhaps the most significant application of antimetabolites is to the treatment of leukemia. Although the concept behind the treatment is straightforward—by interrupting the reproduction of cancer cells one can eliminate the cancer—creating the actual drug was a long, complex and difficult process. Initially Elion’s antimetabolites damaged not only cancer cells, but also the surrounding healthy tissue, and consequently were too toxic to use (“Gertrude Elion”). After synthesizing over 100 different versions of the purine, Elion finally arrived at a successful product: 6-MP, short for 6-mercaptopurine (Pietzch). When combined with other drugs, 6-MP cured 80% of child leukemia patients. This was a significant improvement over previous methods, with which about half of leukemia patients would die within a few months (“Gertrude Elion”).

Gertrude Elion later modified 6-MP so that it could facilitate organ transplants. Organ transplants were often unsuccessful because the organ recipient’s immune system rejected the donor’s organ. The recipient’s immune system would attack the organ as if it were a foreign substance, rather than one that should be incorporated into the recipient’s body. After experimenting with animals, a group of researchers—not part of Elion’s lab—discovered that 6-MP functioned as an immunosuppressant. Impressed by this result, Elion developed yet another series of modified 6-MPs and finally arrived at a highly refined compound well-suited to human organ transplants. This refined version of 6-MPs ultimately allowed a kidney to be transplanted between two unrelated people (“Gertrude Elion”). This was the first immunosuppressive agent ever developed, and its pharmaceutical name was allopurinol (Pietzch).

Elion’s development of antimetabolites also led to the invention of the first antiviral medication, called aciclovir. Just as with cancer and bacterial cells, this antiviral antimetabolite incorporated itself into the DNA of viruses and interrupted their reproduction. Initially the drug encountered the same problem as the drug for leukemia: it killed not only the virus, but also healthy tissue. Aciclovir overcame this obstacle because it was activated by only a specific compound, thymidine kinase, which is present in viruses and absent in healthy cells. This prevented the drug from being toxic to human tissue.

Aciclovir was first used to treat the herpes virus. Later Elion developed yet another antimetabolite-based antiviral drug, called azidothymidine (AZT), which worked in the same way as aciclovir. AZT became the first effective treatment for AIDS (Pietzch).

Gertrude Elion was awarded the 1988 Nobel Prize in Medicine—which she shared with her long-time collaborator George Hitchings as well as with English pharmacologist Sir James Black—for a lifetime achievement in discovering innovative new drug treatments (Elion, “Gertrude B. Elion – Biographical”). Considering the wide range of drugs she developed and the many lives she helped to save, it is without question that she deserved this award. At the time, she was only the fifth woman to ever be awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine (“Gertrude Elion”). Perhaps, then, the most important consequence of the award, and of Elion’s subsequent notoriety, was that it helped establish a prominent place for women in science. Owing greatly to her own personal genius as well as to a series of fortunate coincidences, Gertrude Elion forged a path for women in science and inspired countless female researchers to follow her example of persistence, determination and innovation. This kind of encouragement is essential for women even today, when, despite our progress towards equality, scientific research remains a male-dominated and therefore intimidating field for women.

Works Cited

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Colvin, Michael. “Gertrude Belle Elion (1918-1999).” Science ns 284.5419 (1999): 1480. JSTOR. Web. 3 Oct. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2898936>.

Eisenmann, Linda. “Women, Higher Education, and Professionalization.” Harvard Educational

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Elion, Gertrude B. “Gertrude B. Elion – Biographical.” Nobelprize.org. The Nobel Foundation, 2014. Web. 03 Oct. 2014. <http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1988/elion-bio.html>.

Elion, Gertrude B. “The Purine Path to Chemotherapy.” Bioscience Reports 9.5 (1989): 509-29. Bioscience Reports. Web. 3 Oct. 2014. <http://www.bioscirep.org/bsr/009/0509/0090509.pdf>.

Elion, Gertrude B., Philip A. Furman, James A. Fyfe, Paulo De Miranda, Lilia Beauchamp, and Howard J. Schaeffer. “Selectivity of Action of an Antiherpetic Agent, 9-(2-hydroxyethoxymethyl)guanine.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 74.12 (1977): 5716-720. PMC: US National Library of Medicine. Web. 3 Oct. 2014. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC431864/>.

Elion, Gertrude B., Samuel Singer, and George H. Hitchings. “Antagonists of Nucleic Acid Derivatives: VIII. Synergism in Combinations of Biochemically Related Antimetabolites.” The Journal of Biological Chemistry 208 (1954): 477-88. The Journal of Biological Chemistry. Web. 3 Oct. 2014. <http://www.jbc.org/content/208/2/477.short>.

Pietzch, Joachim. “Gertrude Elion (1996) : Antiviral Chemotherapy: Successes and Challenges.” Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings. Lindau Foundation. Web. 03 Oct. 2014. <http://www.mediatheque.lindau-nobel.org/videos/31543/antiviral-chemotherapy-successes-and-challenges-1996/laureate-elion>.