George H. Hitchings

George Herbert Hitchings
George Herbert Hitchings
Born	April 18, 1905 Hoquiam, Washington
Died	February 27, 1998
Nationality	American
Known for	chemotherapy
Notable awards	1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

George Herbert Hitchings (April 18, 1905 – February 27, 1998) was an American doctor who shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Sir James Black and Gertrude Elion "for their discoveries of important principles for drug treatment," Hitchings specifically for his work on chemotherapy.

Hitchings was born in Hoquiam, Washington, in 1905, and grew up there, in Berkeley, California, San Diego, Bellingham, Washington, and Seattle. He graduated from Seattle's Franklin High School, where he was salutatorian, in 1923, and from there went to the University of Washington, from which he graduated with a degree in chemistry cum laude in 1927, after having been elected to Phi Beta Kappa as a junior the year before. That summer, he worked at the university's Puget Sound Biological Station at Friday Harbor on San Juan Island [1], and received a master's degree the next year for his thesis based on that work.

From the University of Washington, Hitchings went to Harvard University as a teaching fellow, ending up at Harvard Medical School. Before getting his Ph.D. in 1933, he joined Alpha Chi Sigma in 1929. During the next ten years, he would work at Harvard and Western Reserve University. In 1942, he went to work for Wellcome Research Laboratories, where he began working with Gertrude Elion in 1944. Drugs Hitchings' team worked on included 2,6-diaminopurine (a compound to treat leukemia) and p-chlorophenoxy-2,4-diaminopyrimidine (a folic acid antagonist). According to his Nobel Prize autobiography,

The line of inquiry we had begun in the 1940s [also] yielded new drug therapies for malaria (pyrimethamine), leukemia (6-mercaptopurine and thioguanine), gout (allopurinol), organ transplantation (azathioprine) and bacterial infections (co-trimoxazole (trimethoprimA)). The new knowledge contributed by our studies pointed the way for investigations that led to major antiviral drugs for herpes infections (acyclovir) and AIDS (zidovudine).

In 1967 Hitchings became Vice President in Charge of Research of Burroughs-Wellcome. He became Scientist Emeritus in 1976. He died in 1998 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

References

• Raju, T N (2000), "The Nobel chronicles. 1988: James Whyte Black, (b 1924), Gertrude Elion (1918-99), and George H Hitchings (1905-98).", Lancet 355 (9208): 1022, 2000 Mar 18, PMID 10768469 
• Then, R L (1993), "History and future of antimicrobial diaminopyrimidines.", Journal of chemotherapy (Florence, Italy) 5 (6): 361–8, 1993 Dec, PMID 8195827 
• van Zwieten, P A (1988), "[Nobel prize for Medicine 1988]", Nederlands tijdschrift voor geneeskunde 132 (53): 2401–2, 1988 Dec 31, PMID 3063980 
• Giner-Sorolla, A (1988), "The excitement of a suspense story, the beauty of a poem: the work of Hitchings and Elion.", Trends Pharmacol. Sci. 9 (12): 437–8, 1988 Dec, doi:10.1016/0165-6147(88)90133-2, PMID 3078084 
• Horgan, J (1988), "Physiology or medicine.", Sci. Am. 259 (6): 33, 1988 Dec, PMID 3060998 
• Sjöqvist, F (1988), "[Nobel Prize in medicine: three share this year's Nobel Prize in medicine. Important principles in drug therapy]", Lakartidningen 85 (43): 3542–7, 1988 Oct 26, PMID 2462143 
• Dameshek, W (1970), "The deVilliers award of the Leukemia Society of America Inc. to George H. Hitchings, Ph.D.", Bibliotheca haematologica (36): XXI–XXII, PMID 4950964 
• Talalay, P (1969), "Presentation of Dr. George Herbert Hitchings for the Passano Award.", JAMA 209 (9): 1337–8, 1969 Sep 1, doi:10.1001/jama.209.9.1337, PMID 4895870