Monroe E. Wall
Monroe Eliot Wall (born 1916 in Newark , New Jersey , † July 6, 2002 in Chapel Hill , North Carolina ) was an American chemist who, together with Mansukh C. Wani, discovered the cancer chemotherapeutic agents paclitaxel and camptothecin .
Monroe Wall studied at Rutgers University , where he also received his PhD. From 1941 to 1960 he worked for the US Department of Agriculture and then until his retirement at the Research Triangle Institute (RTI), where he headed the chemistry department.
With Wani he examined numerous plant and animal extracts for their effectiveness as chemotherapeutic agents against cancer. In 1966 they published their results on camptothecin, which they obtained from a Chinese tree, and in 1971 on paclitaxel (taxol) from the yew tree. Both developed into major cancer chemotherapy drugs, such as Taxol for ovarian cancer, breast cancer, Kaposi's sarcoma and camptothecin for colorectal cancer. In the case of Taxol, the National Cancer Institute initially refused to fund the research because numerous yew trees would have to be felled and only revised its view after Susan Horvitz clarified the mechanism of action in the late 1970s.
In the 1970s he pioneered the use of mass spectrometry and NMR spectroscopy to determine the structure of drug metabolites .
In 2000 he received the Kettering Prize with Mansukh C. Wani . In 1987 he received an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University . In 1998 he received the Alfred Burger Award from the American Chemical Society .
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| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wall, Monroe E. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Wall, Monroe Eliot (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American chemist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1916 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Newark , New Jersey |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 6, 2002 |
| Place of death | Chapel Hill , North Carolina |