An American biochemist and pharmacologist, receiver of the 1988 Nobel prize in Physiology, Gertrude Belle Elion (23 January, 1918–21 February, 1999) has made noteworthy contributions to the medical world. Her involvement in cancer research was due to the death of her grandfather to cancer. Along with the research for cancer drugs, she has also been involved in the innovations for drug that would fight herpes and AIDS. She invented the drug that was regarded to be the first treatment for Leukemia named 6-mercaptopurine in the year 1954. Another major drug that she developed was Imuran that would assist the body while it accepts new organs during transplantation. She has developed a total of 45 drugs to fight against various diseases, which include malaria, meningitis and bacterial infections. Even after her retirement in 1983, she supervised the making of the drug Azidothymidine that would treat AIDS. Indeed she was a true hero for the medical world.
Gertrude Belle Elion
