Hitchings, George Herbert (1905–1998)

US pharmacologist who was awarded a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1988, with his co-worker Gertrude Elion, for their work on the principles governing the design of new drug treatment. Hitchings' work was on anticancer agents, and immunosuppressive drugs and antibiotics that were of vital importance in the growing surgical field of transplantation.

Hitchings was born in Hoquiam, Washington, and educated at the University of Washington and at Harvard. In 1942 he joined the biochemical research laboratory of Burroughs Wellcome, where he was joined two years later by Elion. Hitchings rose to vice-president of the company in 1967.

Hitchings and Elion started to synthesize compounds that inhibited bacteria from producing DNA and therefore from multiplying, in the hope that these compounds could be used to prevent the rapid growth of cancer cells. They investigated particularly the chemistry of purines and pyrimidines, two groups of chemicals that are involved with DNA synthesis. Their work lead to the production of clinically significant anticancer drugs as well as drugs against malaria, for the treatment of gout and kidney stones, and also drugs that suppressed the normal immune reactions of the body. In the 1970s, Hitchings and Elion's research produced an antiviral compound, acyclovir, active against the herpes virus, which preceded the development by Burroughs Wellcome of AZT, the anti-AIDS compound.