Seeks successor to Vancomycin, the antibiotic of last resort
Washington D.C>, August 15 -- Chemist David A. Evans of Concord, Mass., will be honored on August 22 by the world's largest scientific society for developing strategies for making potential drugs derived from nature. He will receive the 2000 Arthur C. Cope Award from the American Chemical Society at its 220th national meeting, in Washington, D.C.
"I'm in the design and construction business, but at a molecular level," explained Evans, an organic chemist at Harvard University.
Compounds are connected in precise locations with precise orientations - like the components of a building, he said. Biological molecules come in left- and right-handed versions, like gloves, and so must the drugs that interact with them.
"The handedness of chemical reactions is absolutely essential in drug design," said Evans. "To that end, we've developed fundamental chemistry for assembling building blocks and controlling the three-dimensionality of molecules."
He and his research team are particularly interested in vancomycin, currently medicine's antibiotic of last resort. They were the first to synthesize the bacterium-derived antibiotic in the laboratory.
"We're also collaborating to reveal the details through which nature builds vancomycin," he said. "We hope to improve and modify the biosynthesis to build vancomycin analogs," which may be more potent or have fewer side effects.
Evans, who holds the Abbott and James Lawrence chair in Harvard's chemistry department, believes his most significant accomplishment are his students. "I'm principally an educator," he said. "Over the course of my career, I've trained over 200 graduate students, postdocs and undergraduates. I'm proud of their achievements."
Evans adds that he has "always been interested in building things. My dad was wonderful with his hands, and taught me skills like carpentry when I was young. There are aspects of organic chemistry that are highly manual. I love that."
The ACS Board of Directors established the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award in 1984 to recognize and encourage excellence in organic chemistry. Cope was a celebrated chemist and former chairman of ACS. The award consists of $5,000, a certificate and a $40,000 unrestricted research grant.
A nonprofit organization with a membership of 161,000 chemists and chemical engineers, the American Chemical Society publishes scientific journals and databases, convenes major research conferences, and provides educational, science policy and career programs in chemistry. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.