George Herbert Hitchings (April 18, 1905 – February 27, 1998) was an American medical doctor who shared the 1988

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, accord ...

with

Sir James Black Sir James Whyte Black (14 June 1924 – 22 March 2010) was a Scottish physician and pharmacologist. Together with Gertrude B. Elion and George H. Hitchings, he shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1988 for pioneering strategies for rational d ...

and

Gertrude Elion Gertrude "Trudy" Belle Elion (January 23, 1918 – February 21, 1999) was an American biochemist and pharmacologist, who shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with George H. Hitchings and Sir James Black for their use of innovati ...

"for their discoveries of important principles for drug treatment", Hitchings specifically for his work on

chemotherapy Chemotherapy (often abbreviated to chemo and sometimes CTX or CTx) is a type of cancer treatment that uses one or more anti-cancer drugs (chemotherapeutic agents or alkylating agents) as part of a standardized chemotherapy regimen. Chemotherap ...

Education and early life

Hitchings was born in Hoquiam, Washington, in 1905, and grew up there, in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

, Bellingham, Washington, and

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

. He graduated from Seattle's Franklin High School, where he was

salutatorian Salutatorian is an academic title given in the United States, Armenia, and the Philippines to the second-highest-ranked graduate of the entire graduating class of a specific discipline. Only the valedictorian is ranked higher. This honor is tradi ...

, in 1923, and from there went to the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

, from which he graduated with a degree in

chemistry Chemistry is the science, scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the Chemical element, elements that make up matter to the chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions ...

''cum laude'' in 1927, after having been elected to

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal a ...

as a junior the year before. That summer, he worked at the university's

Puget Sound Puget Sound ( ) is a sound of the Pacific Northwest, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and part of the Salish Sea. It is located along the northwestern coast of the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected ma ...

Biological Station at Friday Harbor on

San Juan Island San Juan Island is the second-largest and most populous of the San Juan Islands in northwestern Washington (state), Washington, United States. It has a land area of 142.59 km2 (55.053 sq mi) and a population of 6,822 as of the United States ...

br>
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 Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

as a teaching fellow, ending up at Harvard Medical School. Before getting his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

in 1933, he joined Alpha Chi Sigma in 1929.

Career and research

Following his PhD, he worked at Harvard and

Case Western Reserve University Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a private research university in Cleveland, Ohio. Case Western Reserve was established in 1967, when Western Reserve University, founded in 1826 and named for its location in the Connecticut Western Reser ...

. In 1942, he went to work for Wellcome Research Laboratories at Tuckahoe, where he began working with

in 1944. Drugs Hitchings' team worked on included 2,6-diaminopurine (a compound to treat

leukemia Leukemia ( also spelled leukaemia and pronounced ) is a group of blood cancers that usually begin in the bone marrow and result in high numbers of abnormal blood cells. These blood cells are not fully developed and are called ''blasts'' or ' ...

) and p-chlorophenoxy-2,4-diaminopyrimidine (a

folic acid Folate, also known as vitamin B9 and folacin, is one of the B vitamins. Manufactured folic acid, which is converted into folate by the body, is used as a dietary supplement and in food fortification as it is more stable during processing and ...

antagonist). According to his Nobel Prize autobiography, :The line of inquiry we had begun in the 1940s lsoyielded new drug therapies for

malaria Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or death. S ...

(

pyrimethamine Pyrimethamine, sold under the brand name Daraprim among others, is a medication used with leucovorin (leucovorin is used to decrease side effects of pyrimethamine; it does not have intrinsic anti-parasitic activity) to treat the parasitic disea ...

), leukemia (

6-mercaptopurine Mercaptopurine (6-MP), sold under the brand name Purinethol among others, is a medication used for cancer and autoimmune diseases. Specifically it is used to treat acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL), Crohn's dise ...

and thioguanine),

gout Gout ( ) is a form of inflammatory arthritis characterized by recurrent attacks of a red, tender, hot and swollen joint, caused by deposition of monosodium urate monohydrate crystals. Pain typically comes on rapidly, reaching maximal intensit ...

( allopurinol), organ transplantation ( azathioprine) and

bacteria Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one biological cell. They constitute a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria were among ...

infection An infection is the invasion of tissues by pathogens, their multiplication, and the reaction of host tissues to the infectious agent and the toxins they produce. An infectious disease, also known as a transmissible disease or communicable dise ...

s (

co-trimoxazole Trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole, sold under the brand name Bactrim among others, is a fixed-dose combination antibiotic medication used to treat a variety of bacterial infections. It consists of one part trimethoprim to five parts sulfamethoxazo ...

(trimethoprimA)). The new knowledge contributed by our studies pointed the way for investigations that led to major

antiviral drug Antiviral drugs are a class of medication used for treating viral infections. Most antivirals target specific viruses, while a broad-spectrum antiviral is effective against a wide range of viruses. Unlike most antibiotics, antiviral drugs do n ...

s for herpes infections ( acyclovir) and

AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...

( zidovudine). In 1967 Hitchings became Vice President in Charge of Research of Burroughs-Wellcome. He became Scientist Emeritus in 1976. He also served as Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology and of Experimental Medicine from 1970 to 1985 at

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

. Hitchings founded the Triangle Community Foundation in 1983. Hitchings is a member of the Medicinal Chemistry Hall of Fame.

Personal life

His first wife, Beverly Reimer Hitchings, died in 1985. Hitchings remarried in 1989 to Joyce Carolyn Shaver-Hitchings, MD. Dr. Shaver-Hitchings died in 2009. Hitchings died on 27 February 1998 in

Chapel Hill, North Carolina Chapel Hill is a town in Orange, Durham and Chatham counties in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Its population was 61,960 in the 2020 census, making Chapel Hill the 17th-largest municipality in the state. Chapel Hill, Durham, and the state ca ...

Awards and honors

Hitchings was awarded the Passano award by the Passano Foundation in 1969, and the de Villiers award in 1970. In 1972, he was awarded the

Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh The Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh is awarded by the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine to a person who has made any highly important and valuable addition to Practical Therapeutics in the previous five ye ...

. He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1974. In 1989, Hitchings received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hitchings, George H. 1905 births 1998 deaths Harvard Fellows Case Western Reserve University faculty People from Hoquiam, Washington Physicians from Seattle American pharmacologists Harvard Medical School alumni University of Washington College of Arts and Sciences alumni Duke University faculty Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine American Nobel laureates Foreign Members of the Royal Society Franklin High School (Seattle) alumni