Peptide Chemist Ruth Nutt Joins Corvas

Ruth F. Nutt, a peptide chemist and former senior scientist at Merck & Co. Inc., Rahway, N.J., has joined Corvas International Inc. in San Diego as director of chemistry. In 31 years at Merck, Nutt, 53, was responsible for the development of five major drug candidates, including one now in clinical trials. In addition, she was on the first team to chemically synthesize an enzyme and led the team that first synthesized the HIV protease, preceding recombinant production of the enzyme by about a year. Much of Nutt's work at Merck involved antithrombosis and antiinflammatory research. Among the drug candidates she developed is an anticlotting drug, GPIIb/IIIa antagonist, now in clinical trials. In her newly created post at Corvas, she will help develop the new company's drug leads in those areas. She took early retirement from Merck to join Corvas, she says, because "I felt I could use some of the expertise I developed at Merck even more in a smaller setting, where a lot of people are much younger, and may not have as much experience." In the late 1960s, Nutt was a member of the Merck team that was the first to chemically synthesize an enzyme. While the enzyme had no particular biological purpose, Nutt recalls, the endeavor was an attempt to test a synthesis method developed by Merck scientists (R.G. Strachan, W.J. Palveda, R.F. Nutt, et al., Journal of the American Chemical Society, 91:503, 1969; S.R. Jenkins, R.F. Nutt, et al., JACS, 91:505, 1969; R. Hirschmann, R.F. Nutt, et al., JACS, 91:5078, 1969). She notes that a team at Rockefeller University was producing the same enzyme at about the same time, work that eventually led to the Nobel Prize in chemistry for R. Bruce Merrifield in 1984. A 1980s teamincluding her biochemist daughter Elkathat Nutt led at Merck chemically synthesized the HIV protease, an essential component of the virus that makes it propagate and become infectious (R.F. Nutt, et al., "Chemical synthesis and enzymatic activity of a 99residue peptide with a sequence proposed for the human immunodeficiency virus protease," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 85:712933, 1988). In contrast to the previous synthesis, the HIV effort was an attempt to develop inhibitors to the enzyme, and, in fact, Nutt says, at least one inhibitor candidate developed from the work has begun clinical testing. Nutt says that chemical synthesis was not her team's first option, but using the live virus was too dangerous; the group had also tried to produce the molecule through recombinant methodsa procedure that was accomplished a year after her team's synthesisbut was unsuccessful. Nutt joined Merck as an assistant chemist after receiving her bachelor's degree in 1962 from the University of New Mexico. She held senior research chemist and research fellow positions before obtaining her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1981, and held the positions of senior research fellow and senior investigator before becoming senior scientist in 1989. She is the author or coauthor of more than 100 papers, and her name appears on 20 patents. Nutt says that she has never felt constricted by doing science in an industrial setting: "I've gotten an awful lot out of my research in industry. I've been very lucky. I've been in many projects where you could really do some very nice basic science. That was extremely satisfying." Nutt says that women scientists have had to perform even better than their male counterparts to succeed. She says that if she had one piece of advice she could give to women researchers starting out, it would be: "You have to make sure that you do very good research to have a good basis to stand on, totally independent of who is judging you. "You have the confidence, you know that whatever you're doing, this is really good . . . your research can stand on its own under any circumstances. That really gives you a security that nobody can take away from you." Severo Ochoa, a biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his discovery of an enzyme that synthesizes RNA, died November 1 in Madrid of pneumonia. He was 88. Ochoa made his discovery in 1955, and shared the 1959 Nobel with his postdoctoral student, Stanford University biochemist Arthur Kornberg, who was cited for discovering another bacterial enzyme that synthesizes DNA. In 1956, Ochoa, collaborating with University of California virologist Wendell M. Stanley, created an artificial virus in a test tube, using RNA material. Born in Spain, Ochoa entered Madrid University Medical School in 1922 at the age of 17, and received his medical degree in 1929, the only academic degree he ever pursued. After working in laboratories at Madrid University, Heidelberg, and Oxford University, he emigrated to the United States in 1941 and worked for a year at Washington University in St. Louis before moving to New York University. He became a full professor at NYU in 1946, and was chairman of the department of biochemistry from 1954 to 1976. He was also a member of the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology in Nutley, N.J., from 1976 to 1985. A naturalized U.S. citizen, Ochoa retired in 1986 and returned to Spain. David A. Hungerford, a cancer researcher who, while still a graduate student, described the wellknown Philadelphia chromosomethe first chromosome abnormality consistently found in cancerdied November 6 in Jenkintown, Pa., of lung cancer. He was 66. At the time of his death, Hungerford was a senior member, emeritus, at the Institute for Cancer Research at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. He joined the institute as a research assistant in 1951, after receiving his bachelor's degree from Temple University. In 1959, working with leukemia cells provided by University of Pennsylvania faculty member Peter C. Nowell, Hungerford found that chronic granulocytic leukemia was linked to a shortened arm of chromosome 22. It is not inherited but remains throughout the course of the leukemia, even when the cancer is in remission. The Philadelphia chromosome has been linked to eight types of cancer, tumors of the brain and soft tissue, mental retardation, heart defects, and other disorders. It was first discussed in an abstract in Science (P.C. Nowell, D.A. Hungerford, "A minute chromosome in human chronic granulocytic leukemia," Science, 132:1497, 1960). Hungerford's work called attention to specific genetic changes underlying some cancers, and helped pave the way for the identification of oncogenes. He received his Ph.D. in zoology from Penn in 1961. The latter part of his career was spent studying the structure and function of human meiotic cells in males. In 1970, he described how the chromosome associated with Down's syndrome is derived. Hungerford became a senior member at Fox Chase in 1969. He retired from Fox Chase in 1982, slowed by multiple sclerosis.

Peptide Chemist Ruth Nutt Joins Corvas

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