George Hitchings

George Hitchings was a Nobel Prize-winning pharmacologist who, together with Gertrude Elion, pioneered rational drug design by exploiting differences between nucleic acid metabolism in cancer cells and normal cells. His work led to 6-mercaptopurine, which became the first effective treatment for childhood leukemia, and the antiviral and immunosuppressive drug azathioprine. The rational drug design principles he established are the intellectual ancestry of all modern targeted cancer therapy. He and Elion shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries.