Elion was born inNew York City on January 23, 1918,[4] to parents Robert Elion, aLithuanian Jewish immigrant and a dentist, and Bertha Cohen, a Polish Jewish immigrant. Her family lost their wealth after theWall Street Crash of 1929.[5]: 64 Elion was an excellent student who graduated fromWalton High School at the age of 15.[1] When she was 15, her grandfather died of stomach cancer, and being with him during his last moments inspired Elion to pursue a career in science and medicine in college.[6][7][8][9] She wasPhi Beta Kappa[10] atHunter College, which she was able to attend for free due to her grades, graduatingsumma cum laude in 1937 with a degree in chemistry.[1][11] Unable to find a paying research job after graduating because she was a woman, Elion worked as a secretary and high school teacher before working in an unpaid position at a chemistry lab. Eventually, she saved up enough money to attend New York University and she earned her M.Sc. in 1941, while working as a high school teacher during the day.[12] In an interview after receiving her Nobel Prize, she stated that she believed the sole reason she was able to further her education as a young woman was because she was able to attend Hunter College for free.[13] Her fifteen financial aid applications for graduate school were turned down due to gender bias, so she enrolled in a secretarial school, where she attended only six weeks before she found a job.[5]: 65
Unable to obtain a graduate research position, she worked as a food quality supervisor atA&P supermarkets[5]: 65 and for a food lab in New York, testing the acidity of pickles and the color of egg yolk going into mayonnaise. She moved to a position atJohnson & Johnson that she hoped would be more promising, but ultimately involved testing the strength of sutures.[7] In 1944, she left to work as an assistant to George H. Hitchings at the Burroughs-Wellcome pharmaceutical company (nowGlaxoSmithKline) inTuckahoe, New York.[14][15][16][17][18][19] Hitchings was using a new way of developing drugs, by intentionally imitating natural compounds instead of through trial and error. Specifically, he was interested in synthesizing antagonists to nucleic acid derivatives, with the goal that these antagonists would integrate into biological pathways.[7][12] He believed that if he could trick cancer cells into accepting artificial compounds for their growth, they could be destroyed without also destroying normal cells.[5]: 65 Elion synthesized anti-metabolites ofpurines, and in 1950, she developed the anti-cancer drugstioguanine andmercaptopurine.[7][5]: 66
She pursued graduate studies at night school atNew York University Tandon School of Engineering (then Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute), but after several years of long-range commuting, she was informed that she would no longer be able to continue her doctorate on a part-time basis, but would need to give up her job and go to school full-time. Elion made a critical decision in her life, and stayed with her job and give up the pursuit of her doctorate.[11] She never obtained a formalPh.D.,[20] but was later awarded an honorary Ph.D. from New York University Tandon School of Engineering (then Polytechnic University of New York) in 1989 and an honoraryS.D. degree fromHarvard University in 1998.
Soon after graduating from Hunter College, Elion met Leonard Canter, a statistics student atCity College of New York (CCNY). They planned to marry, but Canter became ill. On June 25, 1941, he died frombacterial endocarditis, an infection of his heart valves.[21] In her Nobel interview, she stated that this furthered her drive to become a research scientist and pharmacologist.
Elion never married or had children.[5]: 65 She listed her hobbies as photography, travel, opera and ballet, and listening to music.[22] After Burroughs Wellcome moved toResearch Triangle Park in North Carolina, Elion moved to nearbyChapel Hill. She retired in 1983 from Burroughs Wellcome to spend more time traveling and attending the opera. She continued to make important scientific contributions after her retirement.[7] One of her passions during this time was encouraging other women to pursue careers in science.[23]
Elion died in North Carolina in 1999, aged 81.[5]: 76
She was affiliated withDuke University as adjunct professor of pharmacology and of experimental medicine from 1971 to 1983 and research professor from 1983 to 1999.[24] During her time at Duke, she focused on mentoring medical and graduate students. She published more than 25 papers with the students she mentored at Duke.[23]
Even after her retirement from Burroughs Wellcome, Gertrude continued almost full-time work at the lab. She played a significant role in the development of AZT, one of the first drugs used to treat HIV and AIDS.[12] She also was crucial in the development of nelarabine, which she worked on until her death in 1999.[7]
Rather than relying on trial and error, Elion and Hitchings discovered new drugs using rational drug design, which used the differences in biochemistry and metabolism between normal human cells andpathogens (disease-causing agents such as cancer cells, protozoa, bacteria, and viruses) to design drugs that could kill or inhibit the reproduction of particular pathogens without harming human cells. The drugs they developed are used to treat a variety of maladies, such as leukemia, malaria, lupus, hepatitis, arthritis, gout,[25] organ transplant rejection (azathioprine), as well as herpes (acyclovir, which was the first selective and effective drug of its kind).[26] Most of Elion's early work came from the use and development ofpurine derivatives.Elion's research contributed to the development of:
In 1988 Elion received theNobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, together with Hitchings and Sir James Black for discoveries of "important new principles of drug treatment".[29] Elion was the fifth woman Nobel laureate in Medicine and the ninth in science in general, and one of only a handful of laureates without a doctoral degree.[25] She was the only woman honored with a Nobel Prize that year. She was elected a member of theNational Academy of Sciences in 1990,[30] a member of theInstitute of Medicine in 1991[31] and a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences also in 1991.[32]
^Colburn, Don (October 25, 1988)."PATHWAY TO THE PRIZE".Washington Post. RetrievedNovember 25, 2019.
^abElion, Gertrude."Les Prix Nobel". Nobel Foundation. RetrievedFebruary 21, 2014.
^abcAvery, Mary Ellen (December 12, 2008). "Gertrude Belle Elion. 23 January 1918 — 21 February 1999".Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society.54:161–168.doi:10.1098/rsbm.2007.0051.ISSN0080-4606.
^Wayne, Tiffany K. (October 11, 2010).American Women of Science Since 1900: Essays A–H. Vol. 1. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. p. 370.ISBN978-1598841589.
^Koenig, R. (October 1, 2006). "The Legacy of Great Science: The Work of Nobel Laureate Gertrude Elion Lives On".The Oncologist.11 (9):961–965.doi:10.1634/theoncologist.11-9-961.PMID17030634.
