Gertrude Belle Elion

Gertrude Belle Elion invented some of the most important lifesaving drugs of the 20th century, including the leukemia-fighting drug 6-mercaptopurine and drugs that facilitated kidney transplants.

Born in New York City in 1918, she was the daughter of immigrant parents and grew up with a thirst for knowledge. Throughout her early education, she enjoyed all of her classes, and her love for science grew with frequent trips to the Bronx Zoo. “What was remarkable about my childhood was that I had such supportive parents who never discouraged me from having ambition,” Elion said. “They never told me that girls weren’t supposed to go into chemistry.”

Following the stock market crash of 1929, Elion’s family struggled to financially support her education. Fortunately, her grades were strong enough to secure her free admission to Hunter College, where she enrolled at just 15 years old in 1933. Torn between the many fields of science, Elion initially found it difficult to choose a major. However, after her grandfather passed away from cancer, Elion was motivated to choose chemistry.

“I was 15 years old when my grandfather died of cancer, and right then I decided that my goal would be to find a cure for this terrible disease,” Elion recalled. “I made the eradication of disease through pharmaceuticals my life’s work. And my life’s work has been very rewarding.”

In 1937, Elion graduated summa cum laude from Hunter College, and in 1939, she entered the graduate chemistry program at New York University, where she was the only woman in her classes. While completing her studies, she taught science as a substitute teacher in the New York City public school system. When Elion received her master’s degree in chemistry in 1941, many men had been sent away to fight in World War II, allowing new opportunities for women in scientific and industrial fields. Elion recalled, “[The war] changed everything. Whatever reservations there were about employing women in laboratories simply evaporated.”

After first working as an analytical food chemist, in 1944, Elion took on a pharmaceutical research position at Burroughs Wellcome. There, she became an assistant to chemist George Hitchings, and her earliest assignments focused on antagonists of nucleic acid building blocks. “Each series of studies was like a mystery story in that we were constantly trying to deduce what the microbiological results meant, with little biochemical information to help us,” Elion wrote.

By the 1950s, there had been enough advances in biosynthesis to aid Elion’s and Hitchings’ research. Their work led to the synthesis of 6-mercaptopurine, marketed as Purinethol®. Patented in 1959, Purinethol was the first major medicine to fight leukemia. Elion and Hitchings’ discovery of mercaptopurine also enabled them to develop another antileukemic drug, 6-thioguanine.

Elion’s continued research also led to Imuran^®, which was patented in 1962. This derivative of 6-mercaptopurine suppressed the body's rejection of foreign tissues. Used with other drugs, Imuran enabled kidney transplants from unrelated donors.

Elion and her team also led the development of allopurinol (marketed as Zyloprim^®) for the treatment of gout, which can be fatal for cancer patients, and the antiviral agent acyclovir (Zovirax^®). Not only could acyclovir treat herpes, Epstein-Barr virus, chicken pox and shingles virus infections, but it also paved the way for the development of AZT – the first drug to treat AIDS. Over the course of her career, Elion was named on more than 45 patents.

In 1967, Elion was named head of the department of experimental therapy within Burroughs Wellcome, a position she maintained until her retirement in 1983. Even after retiring, she continued to serve as a scientist emeritus and consultant at Burroughs Wellcome while also becoming a research professor of medicine and pharmacology at Duke University.

For her extraordinary contributions to science and medicine, Elion received many awards and honors. In addition to sharing the Nobel Prize in Medicine with George Hitchings and Sir James Black in 1988, Elion received the National Medal of Science in 1991 and the Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997. When she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame^® in 1991, Elion spoke about the future of invention. “There is no shortage of creativity among young people, especially if we let them follow their instinctive curiosity,” she said. “The challenge for each of us is to preserve that sense of wonderment that emerges as every child grows — that wonderment that occasionally blossoms into invention.”