John E. Lesch
Chemical Heritage Foundation, Brown Bag Lecture
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Place: 6th Floor Conference Room, Chemical Heritage Foundation
Information: 215-873-8289 or bbl@chemheritage.org
In 1988 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Sir James W. Black, Gertrude B. Elion, and George H. Hitchings “for their discoveries of important principles for drug treatment.” The award to Elion and Hitchings recognized a collaboration that had yielded effective drugs for use in a remarkable variety of conditions, including cancer, gout, organ transplantation, malaria, and bacterial and viral infections. In this talk I will offer a description and analysis of the Hitchings-Elion research program: its grounding in the antimetabolite concept and its implementation in the development of new drugs. I will emphasize the coherence and unity of the program over more than four decades, its incorporation of both rational and empirical elements, and its character as industrialized research.
John E. Lesch is a professor emeritus of history at the University of California, Berkeley, and is now teaching the history of science and medicine as a visiting scholar at Rutgers University. His research emphasizes the relations of the laboratory sciences and medicine, and the development and use of medicinal drugs. His publications include Science and Medicine in France: The Emergence of Experimental Physiology, 1790–1855, and The First Miracle Drugs: How the Sulfa Drugs Transformed Medicine.