Gertrude Belle

The Nobel Prize Committee rarely honors the work of scientists who develop new drugs. However in 1988, in awarding the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine to Gertrude Elion and her colleague at the Burroughs 

American chemist Gertrude B. Elion (right) with her colleague George H. Hitchings, recipients, with Sir James W. Black, of the 1988 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, for their discoveries of important principles for drug treatment.  

DNA deoxyribonucleic acid—the natural polymer that stores genetic information in the nucleus of a cell 

Wellcome Pharmaceutical Laboratories, George Hitchings, it recognized the work of this pair that led to the development of a series of important drugs, among these drugs used to treat malaria, the leukemias, viral infections, and some forms of impaired immune response. 

In 1944 Elion joined the Wellcome Research Laboratories, a subdivision of Burroughs Wellcome, as a senior research chemist by 1967 she was head of their experimental therapy section. Probably the only woman to hold a top-ranking position in a major pharmaceutical company, in 1967 and for many years after, she is said to have felt that she experienced no discrimination at Burroughs Wellcome. 

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Alcamo, I. Edward (1997). Gertrude Belle Elion (1918- ). In Women in the Biological Sciences A Biobibliographic Sourcebook, ed. Louise S. Grinstein, Carol A. Bier-mann, and Rose K. Rose. Westport, CT Greenwood Press. 

Marilyn McKinley Parrish, Gertrude Belle Elion (1918- ), Biochemist, in Shearer and Shearer, pp. 84-88 and Richard Kent and Brian Huber, Obituary, Gertrude Belle Elion (1918-99), Pioneer of Drug Discovery, Nature 398 (April 1, 1999), p. 380. 

Purinethol (Gertrude Belle EUon) Ehon develops the first effective treatment for childhood leukemia, 6-mercaptopurine (Purinethol). Ehon later discovers azathioprine (Imuran), an immunosuppressive agent used for oi n transplants. 

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