Jerome HorwitzDied 6 Sep 2012 at age 93 (born 16 Jan 1919). Jerome Phillip Horwitz was an American cancer researcherwho first synthesized AZT (azidothymidine), in 1964, while seeking an effective drug to treat cancer. For this application, it failed, and he pursued its development no further. He did not patent the drug at that time. Yet, 22 years later, federal approval was given for AZT to be used as the first drug that proved to extend AIDS patent's lives. It had been tested and patented by another drug company, Burroughs Wellcome,which reaped great financial rewards from it, but Horwitz never received any royalties. With colleagues, Horwitz had investigated AZT as one of a family of compounds he called dideoxythymidines which were “fraudulent”nucleosides (a component of DNA). It had been hoped that such a molecule injected in cancer cells might retard their growth.« |
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