Pioneers new methods of making drugs
Washington D.C., August 15 -- Chemist Jonathan Ellman of Berkeley, Calif., will be honored on August 22 by the world's largest scientific society for his pioneering research to design, make and test families of molecules as potential drugs. He will receive the 2000 Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society at its 220th national meeting in Washington, D.C.
"I've always liked science, but I didn't know I wanted to be a chemist until I took a chemistry class to fulfill a college requirement," said Ellman. Now a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, he recalled that his current research field didn't exist when he received his Ph.D. 11 years ago.
Combinatorial chemistry uses recent technological advances to make hundreds or thousands of molecules where traditional approaches can make just one at a time. Screening molecules for particular characteristics - for conductivity in a new material or for biological activity against a disease - is equally streamlined.
Originally conceived as a method to make large molecules such as DNA, a landmark paper published by Ellman's group in 1992 expanded combinatorial chemistry to small, widely applicable molecules. Today the field encompasses new structural compounds, materials for electronic devices, pharmaceutical drug candidates, and other applications.
"What my lab tries to do is develop the chemistry to make large collections of compounds to interact with particular proteins," Ellman summarized. One such kind of protein is the aspartyl protease family, which includes HIV-1 (in the AIDS virus), beta-secretase (which has a role in Alzheimer's disease), and plasmepsin (in malaria).
If one can design small molecules that clog the proteins' active sites or confuse them with nonfunctional mimics, Ellman said, "you can potentially treat the diseases." And in what he emphasizes as a "critical but only first step," his research team has "definitely obtained [aspartyl protease] inhibitors that are potent in cell culture."
The ACS Board of Directors established the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award in 1984 to recognize and to encourage excellence in organic chemistry. Cope was a celebrated chemist and former chairman of ACS. The award consists of $5,000, a certificate and a $40,000 unrestricted research grant.
7/17/00 #12807
A nonprofit organization with a membership of 161,000 chemists and chemical engineers, the American Chemical Society publishes scientific journals and databases, convenes major research conferences, and provides educational, science policy and career programs in chemistry. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.