Mesothelioma drug chemist honored by American Chemical Society
Edward Taylor is a chemist at Princeton University whose discoveries helped lead to the development of Alimta, a chemotherapy drug that has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for mesothelioma treatment. Taylor was recently inducted into the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame. He was also chosen to receive the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) 2010 Alfred Burger Award in Medicinal Chemistry, and he will be inducted into the ACS Division of Medicinal Chemistry Hall of Fame later this year. He was honored at the Celebrate Princeton Invention reception on December 18.
Taylor has spent over 40 years as a member of the Princeton University faculty, receiving emeritus status in 1997. He studied what we now know as folic acid when he was a graduate student at Cornell University, and he spent his career looking for an altered form of the molecule that would kill cancer cells and leave healthy cells alive. His findings, in partnership with scientists from Eli Lilly, led to the development of Alimta, which was approved by the FDA for treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma in 2005.
In addition to his most recent honors, Taylor has also received the ACS Heroes of Chemistry Award, the International Society of Heterocyclic Chemistry Senior Award in Heterocyclic Chemistry and the Research and Development Council of New Jersey’s Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award for Invention.
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