Sir Alan Roy Fersht is a British chemist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, and an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. He was Master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge from 2012 to 2018. He works on protein folding, and is sometimes described as a founder of protein engineering.
Pregabalin, sold under the brand name Lyrica among others, is an anticonvulsant, analgesic, and anxiolytic amino acid medication used to treat epilepsy, neuropathic pain, fibromyalgia, restless legs syndrome, opioid withdrawal, and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Pregabalin also has antiallodynic properties. Its use in epilepsy is as an add-on therapy for partial seizures. It is a gabapentinoid medication which are drugs that are derivatives of γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA), an inhibitory neurotransmitter. Pregabalin acts by inhibiting certain calcium channels. When used before surgery, it reduces pain but results in greater sedation and visual disturbances. It is taken by mouth.
Professor Michael H. Gleb is an American biochemist and chemist specializing in enzymes and particularly those of medical significance. He is the Boris and Barbara L. Weinstein Endowed Chair in Chemistry at the University of Washington in Seattle. He also teaches Honors Organic Chemistry, Chemical Biology and Enzymology.
Frank Henry Westheimer was an American chemist. He taught at the University of Chicago from 1936 to 1954, and at Harvard University from 1953 to 1983, becoming the Morris Loeb Professor of Chemistry in 1960, and Professor Emeritus in 1983. The Westheimer medal was established in his honor in 2002.
Christopher Abell was a British biological chemist who was a professor of biological chemistry at the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry and Todd-Hamied Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge. On his 2016 election to the Royal Society, Abell's research was described as having "changed the face of drug discovery."
Tobin Jay Marks is an inorganic chemistry Professor, the Vladimir N. Ipatieff Professor of Catalytic Chemistry, Professor of Material Science and Engineering, Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, and Professor of Applied Physics at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Among the themes of his research are synthetic organo-f-element and early-transition metal organometallic chemistry, polymer chemistry, materials chemistry, homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis, molecule-based photonic materials, superconductivity, metal-organic chemical vapor deposition, and biological aspects of transition metal chemistry.
Myron Lee Bender (1924–1988) was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He obtained his B.S. (1944) and his Ph.D. (1948) from Purdue University. The latter was under the direction of Henry B. Hass. After postdoctoral research under Paul D. Barlett, and Frank H. Westheimer, he spent one year as a faculty member at the University of Connecticut. Thereafter, he was a professor of Chemistry at Illinois Institute of Technology in 1951, and then at Northwestern University in 1960. He worked primarily in the study of reaction mechanisms and the biochemistry of enzyme action. Myron L. Bender demonstrated the two-step mechanism of catalysis for serine proteases, nucleophilic catalysis in ester hydrolysis and intramolecular catalysis in water. He also showed that cyclodextrin can be used to investigate catalysis of organic reactions within the scope of host–guest chemistry. Finally, he and others reported on the synthesis of an organic compound as a model of an acylchymotrypsin intermediate.
Dale Lester Boger is an American medicinal and organic chemist and former chair of the Department of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA.
Bruce Eliot Maryanoff FRSC is an American medicinal and organic chemist.
William Platt Jencks was an American biochemist. He was noted particularly for his work on enzymes, using concepts drawn from organic chemistry to understand their mechanisms.
JoAnne Stubbe is an American chemist best known for her work on ribonucleotide reductases, for which she was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2009. In 2017, she retired as a Professor of Chemistry and Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Ralph Franz Hirschmann was a German American chemist who led a team that was responsible for the first organic synthesis of an enzyme, a ribonuclease.
Stephen James Lippard is the Arthur Amos Noyes Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is considered one of the founders of bioinorganic chemistry, studying the interactions of nonliving substances such as metals with biological systems. He is also considered a founder of metalloneurochemistry, the study of metal ions and their effects in the brain and nervous system. He has done pioneering work in understanding protein structure and synthesis, the enzymatic functions of methane monooxygenase (MMO), and the mechanisms of cisplatin anticancer drugs. His work has applications for the treatment of cancer, for bioremediation of the environment, and for the development of synthetic methanol-based fuels.
Govindasamy Mugesh is an Indian inorganic and physical chemist, a professor and the head of the Mugesh Laboratory attached to the department of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Science. He is known for his studies on the mechanism of thyroid hormone action and is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy, Royal Society of Chemistry and the National Academy of Sciences, India. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 2012, for his contributions to chemical sciences. In 2019, he was awarded the Infosys Prize in Physical Sciences for his seminal work in the chemical synthesis of small molecules and nanomaterials for biomedical applications.
Sarah E. O'Connor is an American natural product chemist working to understand the molecular machinery involved in assembling important plant natural products – vinblastine, morphine, iridoids, secologanin – and how changing the enzymes involved in this pathway lead to diverse analogs. She was a Project Leader at the John Innes Centre in the UK between 2011 and 2019. O'Connor was appointed by the Max Planck Society in 2018 to head the Department of Natural Product Biosynthesis at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, taking up her role during 2019.
Alexandros Makriyannis is an American biochemist and professor of chemistry and chemical biology in the department of medicinal chemistry at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, where he directs the Center for Drug Discovery and holds the George Behrakis Chair of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology. His research has focused on the biochemical basis of the endocannabinoid system and on the development of synthetic cannabinoids.
Barry Victor Lloyd Potter MAE FMedSci is a British chemist, who is Professor of Medicinal & Biological Chemistry at the University of Oxford, Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator and a Fellow of University College, Oxford.
Iwao Ojima is a Japanese-American chemist and university distinguished professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He has been widely recognized for his seminal contributions to a range of chemical research at the multifaceted interfaces of chemical synthesis and life sciences. As rare accomplishments, he has received four National Awards from the American Chemical Society in four different fields of research. He is also serving as the director of the Institute of Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery (ICB&DD), as well as the president of the Stony Brook Chapter of the National Academy of Inventors.
Matthew John Fuchter is a British chemist who is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the development and application of novel functional molecular systems to a broad range of areas; from materials to medicine. He has been awarded both the Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize (2014) and the Corday–Morgan Prizes (2021) of the Royal Society of Chemistry. In 2020 he was a finalist for the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists.
CPP-115 is an experimental drug being studied for the treatment of various neurological and psychiatric disorders including cocaine addiction, infantile spasms, and Tourette syndrome.
"Richard B. Silverman, Basic Science to Blockbuster Drug", National Academy of Inventors 