Holý Chemistry
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Daniel Rabinovich
The prevention and treatment of viral infectious diseases, including the common cold, influenza, hepatitis, yellow fever, and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), continues to challenge public health systems throughout the world. A huge amount of resources is dedicated to understanding the molecular basis of these afflictions and devising the means to prevent, treat, or cure them. Chemistry, biology, medicine, and related fields play an important role in basic and applied research aimed at accomplishing these goals.
The stamp illustrated in this note honors Antonín Holý (1936-2012), a Czech chemist best known for his pioneering contributions to the development of antiretroviral drugs used in the fight against HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) and hepatitis B infections. Holý studied organic chemistry from 1954 to 1959 in the Faculty of Science at Charles University in Prague. In 1960, he joined the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry (IOCB) of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, where he became lead scientist in 1967 and chief of the Department of Nucleic Acid Chemistry in 1987. He was head of the IOCB from 1994 to 2002 and remained active until his retirement in 2011.
An indefatigable researcher and prolific writer, Holý was the author or co-author of some 600 publications and 60 patents, many of them achieved together with his longtime collaborator Erik De Clercq, a renowned immunologist and microbiologist at the Rega Institute for Medical Research at the Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium. Their concerted work led to the discovery of important drugs, such as tenofovir disoproxil, which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2001 to prevent and treat HIV, often in combination with other antiretroviral agents, and in 2008 for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B. Sold under the trade name Viread, tenofovir disoproxil is a nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitor that works by decreasing the ability of the viruses to replicate. Significantly, it is included in the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines, a compilation of the most important drugs needed in a health system.
For a personal account on the development of antiviral drugs during the past 50 years, see: De Clercq, E. Acta Pharm Sin. B. 2015, 5:520-543.
Written by Daniel Rabinovich <drabinov@uncc.edu>
©2018 IUPAC & De Gruyter. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. For more information, please visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
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