AboutMesothelioma.Net

Edward C. Taylor’s name appears nowhere on the packaging of the anti-cancer medication Alimta as its inventor. But the Princeton University professor still receives thank you letters and emails from grateful mesothelioma patients who have survived well beyond their projected lifespans after starting a course of chemotherapy treatment.

Today, Alimta (known as permetrexed in injectable form) is an anti-cancer medication approved  to treat malignant mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs or abdomen associated with asbestos, and non-small cell cancers. About 85 percent to 90 percent of lung cancers are non-small cell cancer, according to the American Cancer Society.

“Even though the drug was developed and marketed by Eli Lilly, people find out that I am the inventor and send me personal notes of thanks,” Taylor told the Times of Trenton (N.J.) in a profile article. “One man from Australia, which has a lot of asbestos because it was a center of asbestos mining, was given two months to live. That was five years ago, and all traces of cancer have disappeared. He’s fit and full and vim and vigor and he wants me to know it. I have a stack of emails from him.”

The development of the drug followed decades of research and a scientific odyssey of discovery by Prof. Taylor that included fascinations with the human liver, spinach and even butterflies.

Early in his career, Taylor grew intrigued with a compound that had been identified in the human liver and that also was found in spinach leaves and was considered an essential growth factor of micro-organisms. He set out to discover the chemical connection. His scientific inquiry expanded to include butterflies after he read an article about the ring system found in the pigments in the wings of white English cabbage butterflies. As it turned out, the material from liver and spinach possessed a structure that contained as a key element, the butterfly wing pigment structure.

Scientists eventually identified the compound as folic acid, which our bodies use to make new cells and which is essential to healthy growth and development. Taylor was further intrigued that modifying the structure of folic acid slightly could change it into an anti-bacterial compound that not only stopped the growth of micro-organisms, but also caused the remission of a type of lethal leukemia. But the compound was toxic to healthy cells as well.

Taylor’s lab in the late 1970s developed a compound that functioned as an antitumor agent that was less toxic toward normal cells. Any compound that works to kill tumors and is less toxic to normal cells is of special interest to drug manufacturers. In 1985, Taylor collaborated with Eli Lilly to try to develop the compound into an anti-cancer drug. Taylor and his collaborators synthesized more than 800  potential anti-cancer compounds that didn’t work before hitting upon Alimta.

Taylor’s dogged persistence paid off. After decades of research, an estimated $2 billion in costs and 11 years of clinical trial, Alimta was approved from the Food and Drug Administration. Alimta is given in combination with cisplatin for treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma, when surgery is not an option.

Prof. Taylor is still doing research and the royalties paid to Princeton Univesrity by Eli Lilly for Alimta are paying for construction of a new 263,000-square-foot building to house the Department of Chemistry.

Source: Times of Trenton:

http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2010/05/his_find_became_tumors_nemesis.html