SAB NewsMonroe Wall, chemist who helped discover Taxol and Camptothecin, dies at 85Posted 7/9/2002 In the 1960s and 1970s, Monroe Wall and his research partner, Mansukh Wani, isolated two tree-based compounds that were effective in attacking cancer cells in vitro. These two compounds, Taxol (derived from the Pacific yew) and Camptothecin (derived from a Chinese tree), are used today to treat lung, colon, ovarian and breast cancers. Over the past five years, Wall and Wani began to receive international recognition for their work and were considered candidates for the Nobel Prize. However, they never patented their discoveries and thus did not receive any money for their commercial use. In 1997, Dr. Wall was awarded the prestigious American Chemical Society's Alfred Burger Award. In 2000, Wall and and Wani shared the General Motors Kettering Award, the highest cancer research prize. Dr. Wall also was a recipient of the American Pharmaceutical Association's top award for chemical research into natural products and the American Pharmacognosy Society's Research Award. |
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