Pierre Potier
Pierre Potier (born August 22, 1934 in Bois-Colombes ; † February 3, 2006 ) was a French chemist, known for the research and synthesis of natural products with applications on chemotherapeutic agents .
Potier studied pharmacology in Paris (graduating in 1957) and received his doctorate in physics in Paris in 1960. Early on he dealt with the synthesis and analysis of the structure of natural products. For the synthesis of natural substances based on biological models, he developed a variant of the Polonovski reaction , used, for example, in the synthesis of navelbine . He is director of the Chemical Institute for Natural Products (Institut de Chimie des Substances Naturelles, ICSN) of the CNRS in Gif-sur-Yvette . He was Professor of Chemistry at the University of Paris at Orsay , the French National Museum of Natural History and the University of Strathclyde .
From the late 1960s he began to look for drugs against cancer. His laboratory developed the tubulin test to search for anti-cancer agents and he was involved in the development of the cancer chemotherapy drugs Navelbine (against breast and lung cancer, developed by the French pharmaceutical company Pierre Fabre) and the synthesis of taxol , which previously was obtained from yew trees. In the search for the active ingredient in Taxol, an even more effective chemotherapeutic agent, Taxotere , was developed by Rhône-Poulenc with the help of Potier .
He was a member of the Académie des Sciences , the French national academy of pharmacology and that of maxillofacial surgery. Since 1995 he has been a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . Potier was the founder of the Japanese-French Medicinal Chemistry Society and the Franco-US Chemical Society. In 1998 he received the gold medal of the CNRS , in 1995 the Léopold Griffuel Prize and in 2002 the Otto Wallach plaque from the Society of German Chemists (GDCh). He was a Knight of the Legion of Honor and Commander of the Ordre national du Mérite .
In his honor, the Prix Pierre Potier was donated by the French Minister of Industry in 2005, which is awarded to companies for sustainable and innovative chemical products.
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| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Potier, Pierre |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French chemist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 22, 1934 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Bois-Colombes |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 3, 2006 |