COVE R STORY 53
28
81
63
37
7
18
22
77
Iodine
I Ni Tl Eu Rb N A r Ti Ir O Ne A s Li Y Er Ac Rn Nickel
Thallium
Europium
Rubidium
Nitrogen
Argon
Titanium
Iridium
126.90447
58.6934
204.3833
151.964
85.4678
14.0067
39.948
47.867
192.217
8
10
33
3
39
68
89
86
O xygen
Neon
Arsenic
Lithium
Yttrium
Erbium
Actinium
Radon
15.9994
20.1797
74.9216
6.941
88.90585
167.259
(227)
(222)
76
9
C&EN
Os F
INTERNATIONAL YEAR Mg In S Ta Ra Yb C H OF Es CHEMISTRY Osmium
Fluorine
190.23
18.9984032
6
1
99
12
49
16
73
88
70
Carbon
Hydrogen
Einsteinium
Magnesium
Indium
Sulfur
Tantalum
Radium
Ytterbium
12.0107
1.00794
(252)
24.305
114.818
32.065
180.94788
(226)
173.054
Chemistry’s contributions to the WELL-BEING OF HUMANITY are being celebrated in 2011 RUDY M. BAUM, C&EN WASHINGTON
TO COMMEMORATE the International
Year of Chemistry (IYC 2011), C&EN asked several prominent figures in the chemistry enterprise to contribute essays about the achievements of chemistry and how chemistry is improving the lives of human beings around the world. The goals of IYC 2011 are to increase the public’s appreciation of chemistry in meeting world needs, to encourage interest in chemistry among young people, and to generate enthusiasm for the creative future of chemistry. The year 2011 also coincides with the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry being awarded to Marie Curie and provides an opportunity to celebrate the contributions of women to science. The six essays that follow examine a few of the many ways chemistry is being harnessed to meet the challenges humanity faces. In the first essay, for example, Temechegn Engida, president of the Federation of African Societies of Chemistry, looks at the positive role chemistry can play in sustainable development in Africa, especially how chemical education should evolve on the continent. Engida, who has lectured on chemical education at Addis Ababa University and elsewhere in Africa, argues that “chemistry in Africa should establish itself more as a practical enterprise than a theoretical one.” Engida points to food chemistry and environmental chemistry as examples. “Food chemistry … is particularly impor-
tant for Africa,” he writes. “The continent possesses abundant natural resources, and the majority of its population lives in agriculture-based economies. Yet it is not self-sufficient in food production.” Chemistry is an important component of changing that situation, Engida writes, and the education of future chemists in Africa must be geared to such practical issues. CONTENTS AFRICA, 41 The essential role of chemical education reform for sustainable development. SUSTAINABLE FOOD, 46 Leveraging chemistry for growing, developing, improving, and protecting our food. TRADITIONAL MEDICINE, 52 Closing the gap between developed and developing countries in availability of effective medicines. STANDARDS, 58 Ensuring the quality of drugs worldwide. GREEN CHEMISTRY, 62 The design of chemical products that reduce or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances. MARIE CURIE, 66 Fierce determination coupled with a sense of personal dignity.
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In the same vein, John W. Finley, a professor in the department of food science at Louisiana State University, and James N. Seiber, a professor in the department of food science and technology at the University of California, Davis, write in the second essay that “opportunities are greater than ever before for cutting-edge science to improve food and agriculture. Chemistry, in particular, can help provide a safe, healthful, and sustainable food supply to meet a growing worldwide population.” Two essays focus on chemistry’s role in providing people with safe and effective medicines, from very different perspectives. Geoffrey A. Cordell, a professor emeritus in the department of medicinal chemistry and pharmacognosy at the University of Illinois, Chicago, discusses the intersection of chemistry and traditional medicine, and Roger L. Williams, chief executive officer of the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention, focuses on quality standards for ensuring the delivery of safe drugs. In his essay, Paul T. Anastas, assistant administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research & Development, gives his perspective on green chemistry and its role in a sustainable world. Finally, the essay on Marie Curie by science historian and biographer Naomi Pasachoff, a research associate at Williams College, reflects on this great scientist’s career and legacy. ◾
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large number of people. However, since humanA women’s made chemicals can cooperative in have enormous negative eastern Ghana impacts, there is a need prepares palm oil fruits for for enlightened manageprocessing into ment of the chemical organic, fairsciences to ensure that trade palm oil. as the field advances, the effects are beneficial to humanity as a whole. Chemists working in diverse applied fields such as food chemistry, environmental chemistry, green chemistry, and industrial chemistry can all play a part in sustainable development. DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA
CHEMISTRY BOOSTS GLOBAL SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT Food, environmental, green, and industrial chemistry sectors promote DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION IN AFRICA, worldwide TEMECHEGN ENGIDA, FEDERATION OF AFRICAN SOCIETIES OF CHEMISTRY
CHEMISTRY, as a central science, deals
with many areas of human activity. It touches everyone. As such, I believe that chemistry is one of the cornerstones for sustainable development, not only in Africa but also worldwide. Sustainable development has been conceptualized in different ways, but the most widely used definition, as articulated by the World Commission on Environment & Development, is “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Meeting the needs of the future depends on how well we balance social, economic, and environmental objectives when making decisions today. In other words, sustainable development refers to some form of modern technological society, with business taking responsibility for its impact on society and the environment. According to the European Chemical Industry Council, sustainable development involves prudent use of resources, protection of the environment, and economic growth and social progress, with the target being a better quality of life for everyone now and in generations to come. In this regard, chemistry can play a very positive role. For instance, chemists are
well placed to appreciate the scientific issues underlying sustainable development. Chemistry also contributes to sustainable development via economic growth and improved social well-being. Some of the obvious contributions include better pharmaceuticals, high-purity materials for use in the electronics industry, and jobs for a TEMECHEGN ENGIDA is president of the
Federation of African Societies of Chemistry, which he played a key role in establishing in 2006. He is also editorin-chief of the African Journal of Chemical Education, which he founded. As vice president of the Chemical Society of Ethiopia in the mid-2000s, Engida was instrumental in having the United Nations declare 2011 the International Year of Chemistry. Engida received a B.Sc. degree in chemistry and an M.A. degree in chemical education in 1993 from Addis Ababa University; he received a Ph.D. in chemical education from the University of Münster in 2000. He has lectured at Addis Ababa University.
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FOOD CHEMISTRY, which contributes
mainly to the economic objective of sustainable development, is particularly important for Africa. The continent possesses abundant natural resources, and the majority of its population lives in agriculturebased economies. Yet it is not self-sufficient in food production. Worse, most of the people who die from hunger are in Africa. Perhaps in response, many African universities have opened units or departments devoted to food science, in which chemistry is an essential ingredient. These universities can highlight chemistry’s involvement through public events. For example, CHEMRAWN XII included a workshop titled “Chemistry, Sustainable Agriculture & Human Well-Being in Sub-Saharan Africa,” which South Africa’s Stellenbosch University hosted in December 2007. Major topics covered in the workshop were the role of green chemistry in agricultural production in Africa, chemical and microbiological analyses to ensure safe and wholesome food for Africa, and biofuel technologies and their applications. I believe such efforts should be amplified so that African policymakers and the private sector can see the practical value of chemistry in solving real problems and can promote chemists’ efforts at the national and continental level. I also believe that chemistry in Africa should establish itself more as a practical enterprise than a theoretical one. International Year of Chemistry 2011 would be a good opportunity to kick off this endeavor. Like food chemistry, environmental chemistry makes major contributions to sustainable development, in this case primarily through understanding and monitoring our impact on the environment. Unfortunately, I suspect that many standard chemistry textbooks used in Africa do not
COVE R STORY
directly deal with the science of environmental issues including climate change, water pollution, and renewable energy. In fact, not much has changed since 1996, when I represented the Chemical Society of Ethiopia (CSE) at a National Workshop on Environmental Education. At that workshop, I came to realize that scholarly societies in biology, geography, geology, and other fields were conducting several activities devoted to the environment, whereas I could not mention a single activity from CSE. I was surprised that these issues were sidelined in chemistry despite the fact that chemistry is the key to understanding and solving issues associated with climate change, energy efficiency, waste management, recycling, and so on. THIS IS PARTLY WHY I invited Peter G.
Mahaffy, a chemistry professor at King’s University College in Edmonton, Alberta, to give plenary lectures and conduct a training workshop on “Visualization & Climate Change” for chemists and chemistry educators during Ethiopia’s IYC 2011 celebration this past February. I hope the trainees will
Chemistry in Africa should establish itself more as a practical enterprise than a theoretical one. increase their students’ and the public’s awareness of chemistry’s relation to the environment, as this is one of the aims of IYC. Although food and environmental chemistry each primarily addresses one objective of sustainable development, green chemistry can achieve the triple-bottomline benefits of economic, environmental, and social improvement. In recognition of this potential, Ethiopia has conducted a half-dozen workshops on green chemistry in the past six years in collaboration with the University of Nottingham, the Pan African Chemistry Network, and the Federation of African Societies of Chemistry. However, Ethiopia’s recently developed secondary school chemistry curriculum and harmonized undergraduate chemistry curriculum do not seem to have been influenced by developments in green chemistry.
Neither the objectives nor the content areas of the curricula make any reference to green chemistry issues. Assuming that these chemistry curricula stay in place for at least the next five years, green chemistry workshops will have limited impact on sustainable development in Ethiopia unless chemistry teachers and academicians transform the research findings into learnable content for students. Another sector that’s crucial to sustainable development is industrial chemistry, which serves as the backbone of economic growth and improved social well-being as well as a major source of employment. The industrial sector in Africa is now in its infancy, but more and more African governments plan to evolve their economies so that they rely increasingly on the industrial sector. For instance, in late 2010 Ethiopia
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launched the Growth & Transformation Plan (GTP), which aims to transform the economy from the agricultural sector to the industrial sector in the coming five years. To this effect, the country hopes to enroll 70% of university students in science and technology majors. That means more students will be studying chemistry, not only in college but also in secondary school.
This is a huge opportunity to promote the multifaceted role of chemistry in the development of science and technology; however, it poses a challenge as well. I believe that the principles and applications of chemistry as presented to chemistry majors should be substantially different from those presented to, say, chemistry minors or to premed or pretechnology ma-
jors. This requires an understanding of the roles of chemistry in each of these fields and properly planning the corresponding chemistry curricula. The “one chemistry fits all” approach does not work here. Rather, this approach may backfire because a substantial number of the educated population may simply memorize the content of a chemistry class for the sake of passing immediate course requirements and develop less of an appetite for chemistry. My intent in the previous paragraphs was to show that chemistry education is a key to enhancing the contributions of the chemical sciences to sustainable development. Sustainable development is about people and for people. As such, I believe, chemistry education is the vehicle through which chemistry reaches the people who are in need of sustainable development. In addition, chemical education addresses the social objective of sustainable development, as education is one of the primary means for empowerment, participation, cultural preservation, social mobility, and equity. IT IS FOR THESE REASONS that I say the
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planning and implementation of chemical education has to be taken seriously. It is good to expand the number of universities and colleges in a country, as is happening in Ethiopia now, because that is one of the major ways to achieve the goal of access to education for all. But at the same time we need to seriously consider the quality issues associated with expansion. Chemistry, as a practical science, requires the engagement of students in certain chemical laboratory activities. Because of insufficient funding, mainly in the form of foreign currency, it is unlikely that these new universities will be equipped with the minimum facilities needed for chemistry to be taught as a major subject. The situation will be even worse when these new institutions engage themselves in postgraduate programs for chemistry. I also believe that the current practice in which there is one harmonized undergraduate chemistry curriculum for all universities in the country could be revisited. Ethiopia is a diverse nation, with many languages and geographical variations. The universities and colleges are spread across the country, mostly in-line with ethnic regionalization. But the social, economic, environmental, and technological contexts surrounding the universities are quite different. As such, I think that contextualizing and specializing the chemistry programs offered by universities located in sub-
stantially different settings would benefit the country in the long run. For instance, the chemistry department at Haramaya University is situated in an institution whose major specialization is agriculture. Wouldn’t it be better if the chemistry department there specialized in food and agricultural sciences rather than offering the same kind of programs as Addis Ababa University, which is better known in the area of the basic sciences? The same holds true for the other universities—some are known for their strengths in medicine, others in public health, still others in forestry studies. Some universities are located in mineral-rich areas, others are in desert areas, still others are in areas where water is abundant. I am not sure that the chemistry departments in all such diverse contexts should offer identical chemistry programs. I also believe that for chemistry to contribute significantly and meaningfully to sustainable development in Africa, chemistry education should include science and technology of the traditional indigenous knowledge that is part and parcel of African culture. African chemists have studied
many natural products that Africans have traditionally used in day-to-day life. However, there is no corresponding development in the undergraduate education of chemists, let alone at the secondary school level. As such, the knowledge produced in scientific laboratories will remain only as journal articles that have little impact on the lives of the people at the grassroots level. THE BEST SOLUTION to these problems, I believe, is to devise a system in which such knowledge is systemically incorporated in chemistry curricula. One solution could be to recognize and support chemistry education as an essential subfield of chemistry and to encourage educators to keep pace with the developments in mainstream chemistry subfields. Such an approach could accelerate the contribution of chemistry to sustainable development in Africa. On the basis of these arguments I conclude that chemistry has a direct relation with and impact on sustainable development. Nevertheless, it is clear that Africa is behind the rest of the world in many respects. There is no way out for Africans
other than by striving to establish sustainable development strategies and to implement them as much as possible. Chemistry and chemists can be the cornerstones of the sustainable development schemes. It is mandatory for African chemists to give priority to this agenda as much as they can. I would not thus be considered overambitious if I state the main objectives of IYC 2011 in Africa as follows: The International Year of Chemistry is expected to serve as a springboard for assessing the state of the chemical sciences and education in Africa in terms of their contributions to sustainable development on the continent and engaging African chemists in the sustainable development efforts of regional, national, and international organizations working in Africa. I expect every chemical society in Africa, and the members of the Federation of African Societies of Chemistry in particular, to organize chemistry events throughout 2011 and beyond to achieve the above objectives. That is why I recently argued in the African Journal of Chemical Education (2011, 1, 1) that IYC 2011 is an opportunity and a challenge for African chemists and educators. ◾
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MAXIMIZING THE BENEFITS OF FOOD With the help of chemistry, we are eating SAFER, HEALTHIER, AND MORE SUSTAINABLE food than ever before JOHN W. FINLEY, LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY JAMES N. SEIBER, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS OPPORTUNITIES ARE greater than ever
before for cutting-edge science to improve food and agriculture. Chemistry, in particular, can help provide a safe, healthful, and sustainable food supply to meet a growing worldwide population. In this International Year of Chemistry, the central science should be acknowledged for its necessity in growing, developing, improving, processing, and protecting our foods. Analytical chemistry, biotechnology, and food technology join forces to help feed both developing nations and more advanced economies. Chemistry has already helped ensure that today’s food is the safest, most affordable, and most nourishing in history. Detailed understanding of the chemical structures, stabilities, and reactivities of the essential nutrients has guided agricultural breeding, processing, and food formulations to optimize seed stability, commodities, and food products, virtually eliminating essential nutrient deficiencies. Analytical chemistry allows detection of trace contaminants in food from deliberate or accidental adulteration, helping reduce
people’s exposure to dangerous levels of pesticides, industrial chemicals, and heavy metals, and dramatically improving response to the rare exposure incidents when they occur. However, new dangers will inevitably emerge in foods, and chemists are vital to discovering and eliminating them. For example, acrylamide, a possible human carcinogen, can form when starchy foods
are fried or baked. It forms when asparagine reacts with a reducing sugar in a variant of the Maillard browning reaction. The chemical sleuthing that identified acrylamide as a widespread toxicant in foods is a story unto itself (J. Agric. Food Chem., DOI: 10.1021/jf020302f ). Detection of acrylamide with parts-perbillion sensitivity has allowed scientists to understand its formation and to develop technologies to prevent its formation (J. Agric. Food Chem., DOI: 10.1021/jf0730486). Food chemists and biochemists are working with plant scientists to breed new potato varieties with low free-asparagine content that will produce less acrylamide during browning. Scientists analyze not only produce, but the carnivore’s intake, too. During last year’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill crisis, a small army of chemists assessed the possible contamination of seafood. The oil
JOHN W. FINLEY is the head of the food science department at Louisiana State University. He has
authored over 100 technical publications, edited eleven books and holds 47 patents. Currently he is an associate editor for the Journal of Agricultural & Food Chemistry. Dr. Finley holds a B.S. in chemistry from LeMoyne College and a Ph.D. in biochemistry and food science from Cornell University. JAMES N. SEIBER received his degrees in chemistry from Bellarmine College, Arizona State University, and Utah State University. He has been involved in academia and industry, having held various research scientist positions at Dow Chemical. Seiber returned to academic life in January 2009 as chair of the department of food science and technology at the University of California, Davis. Seiber has served as editor of the Journal of Agricultural & Food Chemistry since Finley Seiber January 1999. WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
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leaking into the Gulf of Mexico contained polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, some of which are potential carcinogens. To date, over 300,000 animals in the Gulf have been tested, and none of the shrimp, finfish, or crabs contain the hazardous hydrocarbons at levels of concern set by the Food & Drug Administration. In fact, according to FDA, the levels fell below detection limits in the vast majority of the samples. The rapid results from analytical laboratories allowed most fishing areas in the Gulf to reopen within four months; within a year all areas were opened. Gulf seafood is now the most tested seafood in the world. Testing continues to search for any significant residual toxicants and exposures. ANALYTICAL FOOD CHEMISTRY is also
contributing tools for detecting the illegal contamination of food with adulterants such as melamine. In 2007 and 2008, pet foods, milk, and infant formula were illegally spiked with melamine to provide increased levels of nitrogen, making the products appear to contain more protein than was actually present. The tainted products caused kidney and urinary tract problems in domesticated animals and thousands of people. In response to the crises, regulatory agencies in many countries quickly established maximum allowable melamine levels and developed laboratory methods to measure melamine cyanurate. Analytical chemists worldwide have been busy improving the food safety surveillance systems that protect global food supplies from melamine. Recently, researchers have developed methods suitable for rapid automated screening of a large number of samples (Anal. Chem., DOI: 10.1021/ac200926e). They have also developed methods to detect contamination in nonlaboratory settings (J. Agric. Food Chem., DOI: 10.1021/jf2008327). Microbial contamination of food can also cause outbreaks of food-borne illness. Here, too, chemists play an important role. The chemistry-based tools of biotechnology enable rapid, accurate detection and identification of pathogenic bacteria. A vivid example of the combination of biology and chemistry in the analysis of food is the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Along with pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, PCR has brought speed and precision to researchers identifying the precise
organisms that cause PCR-MASS SPECTROMETRY will tolerate drought, salt, A growing array of contamination. With these floods, pests, and other ensophisticated analytical chemical tools, scientists vironmental stresses. These instruments can identify can discover within hours crops will be particularly microorganisms that are whether a single microbial important in regions where beneficial or detrimental to health. strain has caused multiple irrigation water is limited outbreaks that might otheror uncertain. Scientists are wise have been viewed as an also developing biotech isolated incident. For instance, scientists crops to address dietary needs for microused a sophisticated form of PCR to pinnutrients and for proteins, lipids, and compoint a source of Escherichia coli O157:H7 in plex carbohydrates. spinach originating from a single farm durMicroscopic algae have also emerged ing a 2006 outbreak that caused product as major targets in biotechnology because recalls in several states. they are inexpensive to grow and may be Biotechnology can do more than idenable to produce large quantities of oils suittify problems in the food supply: It also able for biodiesel, special oils for industrial has the potential to be a valuable tool in and food applications, and a proteinensuring sustainability. Even as the world’s carbohydrate mixture useful as animal population grows, land for agriculture is feed or as a food ingredient. Expansion limited. Transforming and development of microbial technology H rain forest or other could also lead to low-cost food oils that N H •••• O ecosystems to require little landmass to produce. H N N produce food Chemistry has already provided the H2N N••••H N O tools to manipulate microalgae to N N produce food oils rich in omega-3 O N H•••• O H fatty acids—“healthy fat.” A leader in healthy food research H2N H was John E. Kinsella (1938–93). During Melamine cyanurate Acrylamide his prolific career at Cornell University and the University of California, Davis, he studied how compounds that we now know as phytoLycopene chemicals and nutraceuticals contribute is not acceptable. Conventional agriculto functional foods—foods that include ture cannot meet the increasing demand disease-preventing or health-promoting for food. ingredients other than basic nutrients. He Biotechnology, in the form of transgenic espoused a central role for the consumer, crops, cloned animals, and engineered mias well as the concepts of sustainability crobes, can help. Chemistry sits at the core and health in food production, processing, of biotech solutions. Future biotech crops delivery, and consumer choice.
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Chemistry has already helped ensure that today's food is the safest, most affordable, and most nourishing in history. More recently, chemistry has solved a long-standing mystery about the goodfor-your-health antioxidants, such as flavonoids, phenolics, and anthocyanins, in plant extracts. Many compounds act as chemical antioxidants, yet this simple chemical property cannot explain the epidemiological evidence suggesting that foods rich in these materials reduce the risk of some cancers and cardiovascular disease (J. Agric. Food Chem., DOI: 10.1021/ jf2013875). Improved analytical techniques and tools of molecular biology are now demonstrating that specific plant, animal, and microbial metabolites consumed by humans exhibit unique bioactivities, from inhibiting enzymes to regulating the expression of genes. As research identifies the pathways involved in disease, the
bioactivities of these naturally occurring compounds may prove therapeutic. The tools of molecular biology—genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, glycomics—are being applied to diets and to populations. They are helping unravel the tantalizing good health enjoyed by people who eat the so-called Mediterranean diet. The diet is characterized by infrequent consumption of red meat; weekly servings of eggs, poultry, and fish; and frequent consumption of cheese and yogurt, olive oil, fruits, vegetables, beans and other legumes, nuts, wine (particularly red wine), whole grains, and potatoes. Hypotheses for the effect of the Mediterranean diet revolve around plant-based nutrients with health-promoting, disease-preventing, or medicinal properties. Now the tools of high-field nuclear
magnetic resonance spectroscopy and mass spectrometry, once used to identify individual chemicals, are being expanded to examine hundreds of compounds simultaneously, allowing scientists to follow the ever-changing mix of chemicals within living systems, known as the metabolome (J. Agric. Food Chem., DOI: 10.1021/jf061218t). Researchers can monitor changes in entire pathways of metabolites in response to disease or to subtle alterations in diet. As a result, recent studies are providing remarkable detail of the temporal processes of digestion, metabolism, and excretion of specific food components. BY UNDERSTANDING the digestion rates and pharmacokinetics of food components, research has transformed simple vitamins and lipids such as niacin and omega-3 fatty acids into successful therapeutic drugs, for instance Niaspan and Lovaza. Human nutritional evaluation tools promise the ability to connect specific foods, food preparation, and consumption patterns to personal disease risk or predisposition. The result may
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transform impersonal diets for populations into personal food choices for preventive measures. The tools of biotechnology are also leading to a better understanding of the influence on human health of microbes in our gastrointestinal tracts. Research published last year details how human milk oligosaccharides interact with babies’ developing
gut microflora (J. Agric. Food Chem., DOI: 10.1021/jf9044205). Scientists have shown how unique sets of complex oligosaccharides help shape the intestinal microbial communities of breast-fed infants by functioning as decoys for pathogens and by selectively stimulating the growth of beneficial bacteria. In a series of studies, David A. Mills and
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a team of researchers at UC Davis tested strains representing 10 different genera of bacteria for their ability to survive and grow on isolated oligosaccharides chemically separated from human milk. They found that some strains of good bacteria grew well with only oligosaccharides as a carbon source, while E. coli and other pathogens did not. Related studies at UC Davis Medical Center are examining how “healthy” gut microbes protect premature infants against pathogens. These are new insights into the ways dietary components support health. This understanding may lead to improvements in bovine and other milk and agricultural products. Combining the efforts of several disciplines will enable scientists to tackle complex questions at the molecular level related to bioactivity and health benefits of food components that just a few years ago were out of reach. Combining efforts also allows researchers to face new challenges in producing healthy foods with reduced input of scarce resources—water and energy—as well as low quantities of synthetic chemicals, and low emissions of greenhouse gases. Food processing, often a key step in making healthy food available, also relies heavily on chemistry. Food processing is carried out for several reasons, including the following: ◾ To improve the safety of foods. Processing is often the key step in preventing spoilage or the growth of unsafe microorganisms. Proper processing can involve pasteurization with irradiation, packaging under hygienic conditions, and incorporation of shelf-life-enhancing natural antimicrobial agents. Such steps can help reduce consumer exposure to pathogenic or toxin-producing strains of E. coli, Salmonella, Campylobacter, Listeria, Aspergillus, and other microorganisms. ◾ To improve the healthiness of foods.
Processing can increase the content of chemicals in foods that are beneficial to health. For example, ultraviolet irradiation of milk or mushrooms increases both foods’ concentration of vitamin D (J. Agric. Food Chem., DOI: 10.1021/jf073398s). Biotechnology may yet identify healthpromoting bioactives that processing can exploit in other widely consumed foods such as rice and wheat.
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improve appeal, and deliver health benefits can improve the nutrition of people at all levels of the socioeconomic spectrum. Tomatoes illustrate how food processing improves food—and that scientists still have much to learn about processing’s potential. Tomatoes are a primary source of the antioxidant lycopene in the diet and are one of the most consumed vegetables in the U.S. Scientists think they play a role in the Mediterranean diet’s health benefits and have begun studying the potential role of lycopene in preventing prostate cancer. In processed food such as ketchup, tomato sauce, and tomato soup, tomato products are available year-round. Food technologists are exploring new methods of peeling tomatoes that eliminate the use of caustic chemicals, in addition to exploring conditions for cooking and canning tomatoes that maintain their health benefits. Research has shown that proper processing conditions can maintain, and even enhance, the amount and bioavailability of lycopene and other antioxidants in tomato products (J. Med. Food, DOI: 10.1089/10966200152053668). Scientists are working to find health-enhancing processing methods for tomatoes and other agricultural commodities that are efficient in the use of water and energy, and minimize emissions of greenhouse gases and waste. Food processing, safety, sustainability, and healthfulness have already made great strides but still offer scientific challenges. These challenges can benefit from multidisciplinary research involving chemists along with food technologists, microbiologists, sensory scientists, agricultural engineers, and other scientists and engineers. The benefits of such cooperative efforts may appear in affordable, healthy, delicious, and sustainable foods far surpassing what the average consumer puts on the dinner plate in wholesomeness and overall sensory appeal.
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[email protected] The authors acknowledge with gratitude the helpful comments provided by Professor Bruce German and the editorial assistance of Loreen Kleinschmidt of the University of California, Davis. WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
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PLANT MEDICINES KEY TO GLOBAL HEALTH Paradigm shifts could improve quality, availability, and sustainability of TRADITIONAL AND NONTRADITIONAL MEDICINES GEOFFREY A. CORDELL, NATURAL PRODUCTS INC.
ON THE LONDON UNDERGROUND, pas-
sengers are advised to “mind the gap” to avoid falling into the space between the train and the platform. Drug discovery has its own famous, and famously widening, gap—that between research investment and approved drugs. Perhaps even more important is another void lurking in the process of creating new drugs: a vast gap in drug accessibility. This chasm exists between developed and developing economies, as well as between rich and poor within developed nations like the U.S. The majority of the world’s population has limited or no access to many existing drugs. What’s more, scant attention is afforded drug discovery for most of the top killers in developing countries, such as HIV/AIDS, lower respiratory infections, diarrhea, hepatitis C, childhood diseases, malaria, and tuberculosis (TB). Traditional plant-based medicines are the only treatments available for much of the world. And these herbal supplements often lack quality and evidence for safety and efficacy. One of the missions for the International Year of Chemistry should be to close these gaps in drug accessibility and quality. Chem-
istry and biology remain the basis for drug discovery and development. But what will provide the moral compass in global health care for the next 20 to 30 years? Which diseases will have marketed drugs, and how much will they cost? Will industry focus on developing medicinal agents for the whole world? If not, which stakeholders will participate financially and scientifically in discovering and developing drugs for the majority of the world’s people? Chemistry can play a wise, compassionate, and sustainable GEOFFREY A. CORDELL, is emeritus professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and an honorary member and past president of the American Society of Pharmacognosy. He is president of Natural Products Inc., a consulting company based in Evanston, Ill. His research interests are concerned with the quality control and sustainability of traditional medicines, and with the use of vegetables as stereoselective chemical reagents. WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
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role in bridging these gaps in global health. Several paradigm shifts are necessary to supply quality medicinal agents to an expanding global population of 7.1 billion, possibly rising to 10 billion by 2035, according to some estimates. The first is to think of all medicines, whether natural or synthetic, as essential, sustainable commodities. Whether prescription products, over-the-counter medicines, or plantbased drugs, they should be synthesized or sourced in a manner that makes them as sustainable as possible. As the global population expands, it is critical that access to drugs for future generations is not jeopardized by resource depletion. That means developing strategies in which the reagents for synthetic drug processes are sustainable. For chiral processes, one example is to explore in depth the replacement of heavy-metal catalysts or expensive chiral reagents with cheap, renewable reagents from common plant materials such as cassava, coconut juice, sugarcane, and carrots. Nature already carries out many chemical transformations with high regio- and stereospecificity. This substrate specificity should be explored. This shift also means evaluating how plant-based medicines affect ecosystems. Overharvesting can impact critical resources. At least 85% of medicinal plants sold are collected indiscriminately from the field; consequently, many essential medicinal plants are threatened. (Biodivers. Conserv., DOI: 10.1023/B:BI OC.0000021333.23413.42). As a result, the sustainability of medicinal plants has become essential to long-term health care strategies. The long-term stability of medicinal plant activity is one aspect of sustainability; another is the tremendous
GEOFFREY A. CORDELL (ALL)
waste of plant resources through inefficient extraction techniques. Reducing usage while maintaining health benefits is an important strategy. Chemical analysis of the extract and residue is critical to determine whether active components remain unextracted. Analysis can also correlate chemical identity with biological response. A SECOND PARADIGM shift is to change
the focus of drug discovery to attend to the developing world’s disease needs. For the majority of people in the world, chemistry has played a minimal role in providing or improving their medicinal agents. Global pharmaceutical investment is skewed toward the financial rewards of the wealthiest markets; at least 90% of R&D funding is spent on the health issues of less than 10% of the global population, and only 20 of the 1,556 new chemical entities marketed globally in the period 1975–2004 were for either tropical diseases or TB (J. Nat. Prod., DOI: 10.1021/np068054v). As a result, many major diseases in the world desperately need a drug pipeline. Funding for discovery research on these diseases is inadequate by several billion dollars per year. Some progress is being made. Without expecting a return on investment, a small number of pharmaceutical companies have established drug discovery partnerships, focused primarily on vaccine development for malaria and TB. Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline, for example, have established partnerships to conduct research on neglected diseases (C&EN, Nov. 9, 2009, page 16).
However, these partnerships between companies and nonprofit organizations are typically in the developed world, and the research is conducted mostly there. It is time for a global commitment to bring developing countries into the drug discovery research process. New international initiatives for natural product drug discovery should develop a more structured, well-funded, broader approach that reflects evidence-based traditional medicines. Innovative collaborations and partnerships must form across the developed-developing world divide and among developing countries. Such collaborations can provide local infrastructure, information systems, people, and most important, funding and long-term commitments in order to promote local and regional drug discovery initiatives using indigenous knowledge. Programs must also build commercial capacity and develop appropriate protections for intellectual property rights. Many questions remain: Who owns the intellectual property rights? Is it the sovereign country of origin (usually in a low- or middle-income country) or the developer of the invention (often in the developed world)? Is sharing the rights to the invention a win-win solution? A third paradigm shift is to improve the fundamental quality control of traditional and plant-based medicines. For millennia, cultures around the world used a slowthroughput process of trial and error to develop a local, natural-resources-based tradition of ethnomedicine. Today, these systems of traditional medicine provide the drug supply for more than 4.5 billion people ( ). For many people, little has changed in their drug delivery system in 4,000 years. Their main or only access to medicinal agents remains a local market, a shaman, a hakim, or other herbal practitioner. In some middle- and low-income countries, governments, academic institutions, and corporations are already using local resources and indigenous knowledge to
STREET SELLERS
A majority of the world’s population has access only to plant-based medicines, similar to the ones sold by these vendors in Colombia (from left), Morocco, and Syria.
discover new drugs for global diseases and to validate the safety and efficacy of traditional medicines. For instance, in China, large government investments in such efforts are a central component of national health care policy. Development of research and industrial production facilities is a high priority. In the modern quality-control laboratories of one major company, a dedicated ultraperformance liquid chromatography system examines each batch of each traditional medicine product for active constituents. Tight quality control will ensure regulatory acceptance in future global marketing of evidence-based traditional Chinese medicine products. Currently though, quality control of plant-based medicines is a global issue. Back in Chicago, at my local health food store, 15 Echinacea products are on display. Research indicates there is a 50-50 chance of selecting an authentic product containing both the correct species and correct plant component at an appropriate strength (Anal. Bioanal. Chem., DOI: 10.1007/s00216-007-1342-8). No regulatory body in the U.S. ensures either safety or efficacy, and the science behind the products is minimal. As a result, patients are subjected to unfettered health claims. THIS IS A DEPLORABLE HOLE in the
health care system, when at least half of the population in the U.S. takes botanical dietary supplements in addition to over-thecounter and prescription products, fully expecting that such medicine will “work” (National Center for Health Statistics Data Brief, April 2011, No. 61). Patients have the right to expect safety and efficacy in dietary supplements as a result of a strong evidence base, in which natural product and analytical chemistry are essential core components. Fortunately, there has been tremendous progress in the sciences behind traditional medicine and dietary supplements, so opportunities to improve the situation are available. Adequate funding and regulatory incentives are absent, however. Definitions and regulations for traditional medicines and dietary supplements typically begin (and often end) with a botanical analysis of the plant material.
Traditional medicine, with a heavy investment in contemporary science and technology, is rapidly becoming very nontraditional. WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
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However, health benefits do not accrue from the name of a plant. Instead, evidence-based traditional medicine must rest on appropriate, contemporary science-based regulations. It must also receive support from information systems, botany, chemistry, and biology, including the application of appropriate biotechnologies and well-designed clinical studies.
Many sciences must come together to enable this paradigm shift in quality control. Pharmacognosy, the study of biologically active natural products, can bring a fully integrated, highly collaborative focus to these studies. The global implementation of regulatory and scientific foundations for traditional medicines and dietary supplements would transform health care for all.
Information management must play a major role in the paradigm shift. Ethnomedical information, including that in the public domain, is exceptionally scattered, making it difficult to compare global plant use and to track research results. Collating and evaluating locally generated data are important activities that are ongoing. But an accessible, global compilation of traditional medicine that embraces the contemporary botanical, chemical, biological, and clinical aspects of plants would be an exceptionally valuable resource for government agencies, scientists, industry, practitioners, and patients. CLINICAL INFORMATION must also be
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accessible, transparent, and public, even (especially!) when clinical trials give negative results. All trials on traditional medicines and dietary supplements should be registered online at clinicaltrials.gov, and comply with the CONSORT standards—an evidence-based, minimum set of recommendations for reporting. It should no longer be acceptable that ineffective agents are marketed with health claims if these have been clinically disproven, even if the agents are safe; the patient expects efficacy, after all. The laboratory sciences must play important roles, too. Using the correct part of the correct plant is not an adequate botanical standard for scientific studies on traditional medicines or dietary supplements. Considering otherwise may be a fatal and fundamental flaw; it is a prime reason why variable results currently come from repeated testing of plant extracts in different laboratories. As a plant’s metabolism changes—for instance with age, time of year, or location—its chemical profile changes. Consequently, the plant’s biological and therapeutic effects will change in a nonpredictable, nonreproducible manner. Only when such medicines and supplements are defined in a botanically and chemically consistent manner does it become appropriate to explore the in vivo and in vitro effects, the pharmacokinetics, the formulation, the mechanism of action of metabolites, and the efficacy of traditional medicines and dietary supplements. Achieving this standard of botanical and chemical identification requires DNAbased plant analysis and natural-productbased analytical chemistry. The “bar coding” of medicinal plants to quickly, easily, and reliably distinguish species on the basis of one or two short genetic sequences
has become a very active research area, particularly in China. For traditional medicines, it will become a standard for botanical quality control and an integral aspect of regulatory control. Concurrently, metabolomics is providing a vivid demonstration that a single plant species and part will show significant chemical diversity based on external and genetic factors. Combining bar coding and metabolomics will transform the fundamental definition of a plant as a traditional medicine or dietary supplement and assist in ensuring both safety and efficacy. In addition to identifying the active components of medicinal plants, science—particularly chemistry—must help protect patients from contamination and adulteration of traditional medicines and dietary supplements. Contaminants may include pesticides, heavy metals, microbial species, and radiation, while adulterants may include other plant materials with similar biological effects, or synthetic drugs. Aware of these issues, some companies in Asia are ramping up sophisticated analytical chemistry to analyze more than 150 potential contaminants and adulterants in their products.
diverse functional roles of multiple components within complex ethnomedicines. The process of deconstruction asks important questions: Are all of the plants in a 20-plant prescription biologically necessary? Are there ways to improve the concentration of the effective ingredients, standardize the dose, and maintain safety? Would different extraction techniques
lead to higher yields of active ingredients? Studying how traditional medicines modulate human genes, individually and as complex mixtures, is important mechanistically and could lead to prescribing “designer” traditional medicines based on an individual’s genetic makeup. Traditional medicine, with a heavy investment in contemporary science and technology,
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nome profiling of the effects of traditional medicine extracts are delineating the functions of an individual plant extract and its components. Such knowledge permits rationalization of the use of a medicinal plant and suggests biological methods for quality control to augment botanical and chemical controls. Still unclear, however, are the nonscientific strategies, including sharing of the financial investments, necessary to bring traditional medicines and dietary supplements to a higher level of quality and standardization, ensuring safety and a healthful outcome. The modern study of medicinal plants extends beyond quality control into drug discovery. Identifying and developing individual agents from effective traditional medicines are being pursued very aggressively in several countries. Standardized plant preparations based on traditional medicines are also in advanced clinical development. Researchers are searching for synergistic effects of plant products with other plant medicines to enhance effectiveness, mirroring the philosophies of multiple-medicine regimens for cancer and HIV/AIDS. Personalized plant-based medicines may evolve from deconstruction of the
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Chemistry can play a wise, compassionate, and sustainable role in bridging these gaps in global health.
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traditional medicine requires openness to the role that chemistry—specifically, natural product chemistry and analytical chemistry—must play in redefining health care for the majority of people. A commitment to initiate dialogues for more extensive collaboration and development would constitute a major achievement for global health in this International Year of Chemistry. Despite the essential role in global health care that traditional medicine and the natural product sciences must have for the majority, the influence of professional scientific groups in public policy has, to date, been minimal. To enable progress in medicinal agents, that paradigm also has to change. In some parts of the world, constructive steps are being taken. For instance, the Japanese Liaison of Oriental Medicine brings together Japan’s major scientific societies dedicated to traditional medicine. The group uses its expertise to WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
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assist the government directly, providing advice and opinion, representing the government at international meetings, and proposing areas for future R&D. In North America and Europe, there is a need for similar groups from natural product, chemical, and biological societies to assist government scientists and regulaGEOFFREY A. CO RDEL L
is rapidly becoming very nontraditional. An important outcome of these studies will be that in most parts of the world, a plethora of new, effective products derived from traditional medicines will be available. Some of these products will be in direct competition with the single-agent synthetic modalities of the developed world. Beyond the scientific questions, economic and regulatory ones will remain: What are the global implications for traditional medicines demonstrated to be safe, effective, and sustainable? Where will they be marketed and how will they be regulated? What disease-related health claims, based in science and on standardized clinical trials, will be allowed? Will they provide a reliable source of medication that can bridge the gap in access to drugs for the majority of the world’s population?
tors. Such cooperation would enable scientifigovernment cally sound choices with invests heavily in quality control respect to establishing of traditional an evidence base for medicines, the quality, safety, and which could lead efficacy of traditional to regulatory medicines and dietary acceptance in supplements being sold the global drug market. globally and online. Rationalizing traditional medicine to focus on products that are scientifically demonstrated to be safe and effective is an enormous task and will take many years to plan, fund, develop, and implement. Yet for most of the world, there is little choice. With enhanced global collaboration and leadership, the International Year of Chemistry can begin to change the paradigms of traditional medicine and dietary supplements. The outcome would be a major transformation in health care for practitioners and patients who would be ensured access to products that provide health benefits with minimal risk. With wisdom and compassion, chemistry can “mind the gap” by helping make it smaller! ◾ LOCAL GOES GLOBAL China’s
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USP
COVE R STORY
identity of those medicines and foods. The organization I am privileged to lead, the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP), is focused on the critical intersection where access and innovation meet on the global stage, with an unwavering goal of preserving and advancing public health. USP is a private, nonprofit, sciencebased, standards-setting organization driven by practitioners and consumers. Its global cadre of volunteers is composed of hundreds of highly committed experts from around the world, supported by an equally committed staff of more than 600 employees. USP is an old organization, begun in 1820, but in the 21st century it remains focused on the cutting edge of science, law, public policy, economics, and health. USP seeks to improve the health of people around the world through public standards and related programs that help ensure access to good-quality and safe medicines and foods. As in most scientific, technical, and commercial endeavors, standards are a key element in delivering good-quality and beneficial medicines and foods to patients, practitioners, and consumers. QUALITY STANDARDS
USP’s quality standards are used by regulators and manufacturers in more than 130 countries worldwide.
MEDICINE QUALITY FACES CHALLENGES ACCESS, INNOVATION, AND GLOBALIZATION:
opportunities and hurdles in providing highquality drugs to the world’s population ROGER L. WILLIAMS, U.S. PHARMACOPEIAL CONVENTION
GLOBALIZATION OF the world’s econo-
mies has wrought dramatic changes, and in no arena is this more evident than in the development, registration, production, and distribution of medicines and foods. Remarkable strides in chemistry, biology, pharmacology, and informatics occur daily. Coupled with worldwide manufacturing of medicines, foods, and their ingredients, these scientific advances offer remarkable opportunities for improved health and treatment of illness via access to quality medicines and foods. As regulatory and economic structures around the world have struggled to keep pace with technological innovation, however, new challenges have arisen for people and institutions that work to protect public health. As we have seen in the U.S., the task of safeguarding the quality of medicines and foods has become increasingly complex and difficult, mirroring the growth of overseas manufacturing and transnational supply chains. The International Year of Chemistry’s focus on chemistry’s contributions to advancing human health and the environ-
ment and providing sustainable sources of energy, clean water, and advanced materials reminds us of the ubiquity of chemistry in meeting human needs. What is not always as obvious, particularly in the realm of providing people with safe and effective medicines and nutritious foods, is chemistry’s essential role in setting standards against which to measure the quality and ROGER L. WILLIAMS, is CEO of the U.S.
Pharmacopeial Convention. He also serves as chair of the council of experts, USP’s scientific standards-setting body, and leads USP’s global public health outreach. He is an internist and clinical pharmacologist with degrees from Oberlin College and the University of Chicago’s School of Medicine. He served in the U.S. Army in Korea and at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, and, prior to USP, worked in academia and at FDA. WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
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WHILE THE IDEA of a pharmacopeia arose
in Europe more than 500 years ago, the first collection of published U.S. quality standards for medicines—the “U.S. Pharmacopeia”—was an early 19th-century effort by American physicians to ensure consistency in how medicines were formulated. Essentially a book of recipes, it was highly innovative for the time, particularly in reflecting the American understanding of how standards are developed. In contrast to other pharmacopeias, USP is grounded in a private, practitioner-driven solution to public standards for medicines and foods. While USP’s early standards were directed toward the compounding apothecary, USP’s leaders advanced solutions that directed them toward quality measurements in the latter part of the 19th century. This change was occasioned by the rise of pharmaceutical and food manufacturing, which was unfettered at first and subsequently has been subject to increasing regulation. In the 20th century, USP worked to keep pace with the boom of small-molecule drug development that laid the foundation
its quality. Availability of independently tested chemical and biological reference materials is critical to the public trust and consumer confidence in the quality of medicines and foods. USP TODAY is at heart a measurement
organization, and a core science for its activities is metrology. Over the past decade and more, USP has advanced strong measurement science principles, working with key organizations such as the International Bureau of Weights & Measures and the
in step with innovations in medicine. As manufacturing of medicines and foods forges ahead on its globalized path, certain vulnerabilities will be difficult to avoid. Perhaps no clearer example of this exists than the threat posed by substandard and counterfeit products. While developing nations are the most susceptible, the rest of the world is by no means immune. In the past few years, instances of adulterated heparin and pet food and milk products tainted with melamine have reached patients and consumers in the U.S. USP
for the modern pharmaceutical industry and moved away from crude mixtures (biologics) drawn from nature. Today, we are moving rapidly into an era of biologic drugs, personalized medicine, and complex diagnostic tools as our understanding of diseases grows. Compared with small-molecule drugs, the heterogeneous makeup of medicines from larger biological molecules challenges us to develop new ways of approaching quality standards. The revolution in diagnostics is mirrored now by a revolution in manufacturing and testing that allows equally sophisticated ways of ensuring that a medicine or food is also fit for purpose. Unfortunately, the achievements of our species remain coupled to the all-too-human tendencies to cheat or cause harm—and these traits have been with us since our beginnings. Some, but not all, of USP’s published standards are recognized in U.S. law and in the laws of countries around the world. The “U.S. Pharmacopeia” and “National Formulary” are official compendia of the U.S. and thus enforceable by the Food & Drug Administration under the Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act of 1938. Indeed, the grounding of our nation’s regulatory system in ensuring that medicines and foods are not adulterated and misbranded based on an intertwining of manufacturing, regulatory, and standards-setting science and policy has been a hallmark of the American experiment. USP sets its standards through open, credible, science-based processes that accord with provisions articulated by the American National Standards Institute for accreditation as a voluntary consensusstandards development organization. But USP has chosen not to be a voluntary consensus standards-setting organization, in which those affected by a standard participate freely in its development. Instead, USP works toward stricter conflict-ofinterest rulings that ask participants in the standards-setting process to leave behind their “home base” interests and work in the interests of the organization and the health of the public. USP does not receive tax or other dollars for its standards-setting activities, but achieves its independence to operate freely throughout the world through sale of its compendia and reference materials. The availability of these standards cannot be overemphasized: Access to public standards allows anyone to test a medicine or food and its ingredients to ensure
National Institute of Standards QUALITY CONTROL and other parts of the world— The Promoting the & Technology. Application of with devastating, sometimes of Medicines sound nomenclature and deter- Quality fatal outcomes. In the rush to program helps collect minations of uncertainty and innovate, corresponding atmedicines for quality traceability increasingly guide tention must be paid to methand authenticity USP’s actions. These approach- screenings at markets ods to control and prevent Senegal (shown) es are particularly applicable for in these tragedies. and throughout chemically synthesized medici- sub-Saharan Africa, Detection plays a central nal and food ingredients. role in thwarting the efforts Southeast Asia, and Latin America, In the coming world where of counterfeiters and those biologics will increasingly play a involved in economically morole, USP looks to bioassays and tivated adulteration of media growing understanding of cellular syscines and foods in international supply tems to help ensure quality. Intensive efchains. In 2007–08, episodes of heparin forts are being made to augment diagnostic (a widely used blood thinner) adulterated capabilities that use biomarkers in underwith oversulfated chondroitin sulfate standing diseases. While many of the tradi(OSCS) caused adverse reactions and tional analytical tools used to determine deaths in the U.S. and elsewhere. Standard small-molecule drug quality are relevant to tests used to establish heparin’s identity our understanding of biologics, blending and quality proved inadequate, as OSCS our knowledge of chemistry and biology is closely mimics heparin’s blood-thinning vital if we are to keep quality standards characteristics without providing any acWWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
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Borders are porous, manufacturing is global, and neither supply chains nor diseases are confined to one country. tual anticoagulant effect. OSCS is much less expensive than real heparin, which explains the criminal motive. Responding to the public health crisis, USP worked in close concert with FDA and international manufacturers and pharmacopeias to develop more sensitive and specific tests than those in current use. In an era when economically motivated adulteration is growing far more common, the scientific community must engage in this kind of proactive strategy to help protect the world’s medicine supply. TODAY MANUFACTURERS are employing a variety of packaging
technologies to help secure drug products against counterfeiting as medicines pass through various distribution channels prior to reaching patients. Overt methods such as holograms or colorshifting inks are used on product packaging. Covert technologies such as infrared and ultraviolet pigments on packaging require the use of specialized equipment to examine or “read” such features. Forensic technologies such as molecular markers and biological tracers can be identified only through laboratory testing and can be integrated into a drug product, with knowledge of its presence resting solely with the manufacturer. USP is engaged with experts from these fields so that knowledge of secure packaging technologies is integrated into our packaging standards.
6\YWLVWSL THRL[OL KPMMLYLUJL =PZP[\ZH[*OLTZWLJ ,\YVWLPU.LUL]H )66;/ +
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USP is also exploring the use of spectral libraries for the identification and analysis of drug products. A proposal to establish a USP spectral library looks to a combination of several analytical platforms for identifying product components—including Raman spectroscopy, near-IR spectral libraries, mass spectral libraries, and high-resolution image and text information libraries—and orthogonal calculations to identify specific chemical “fingerprints” of drugs. The potential uses for such a tool range from the detection of counterfeit and substandard medicines to the identification of impurities associated with particular drug products. The benefits of this approach are most significant for use in the field, where law enforcement agencies could deploy sophisticated portable instrumentation to compare samples from anywhere in the supply chain or on the pharmacy shelves to an extensive database of authenticated drug products and substances. Throughout its first century, USP was focused solely on the U.S. Over time, the reach of USP’s standards and expertise has extended to manufacturers, regulators, and others involved in health care in more than 130 countries. In addition to our headquarters and laboratories in Rockville, Md., USP has facilities in Hyderabad, India; Shanghai, China; São Paulo, Brazil; and Basel, Switzerland—all centers for the world’s pharmaceutical industry. From these vantage points, USP has been able to forge strong working relationships that further public health regardless of economic or political boundaries. Our work around the world has taken on many dimensions beyond our traditional role of developing and revising quality standards enforceable by FDA. IT IS FITTING that during the International Year of Chemistry, USP will debut the USP “Medicines Compendium,” which will be an online compendium of standards focused on helping to address some of the critical gaps associated with access to medication quality standards. Medicines eligible for inclusion in the compendium will be those approved for marketing by any recognized national authority. The “Medicines Compendium” will be offered freely to all, so that it can be taken up by anyone—not just manufacturers, but regulatory bodies and other pharmacopeias as well—as a means of ensuring practitioners and patients that they are receiving the best quality medicines. Documentary standards included in the compendium will be performance-based monographs that allow users flexibility in the choice of, for example, sample preparation, instruments, and procedures from among methods listed in the compendium as acceptable, as long as performance criteria are met. At this stage, the USP “Medicines Compendium” is an experiment, just like the experiment of the “U.S. Pharmacopeia” in 1820. Initially based in USP’s facility in India, the compendium will be announced formally in July. An element of global public health closely tied to access is national capacity development for testing medicine quality. USP recently initiated a pilot Technical Assistance Program (TAP) in which reference materials, documentary standards, and hands-on training are being provided to drug quality-control laboratories in Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, and Sierra Leone. USP’s goal for TAP is capacity development for resource-challenged reg-
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ulatory authorities, which might otherwise need to rely on outdated or poor-quality reference materials, which can seriously compromise data on medicine quality. Using clear metrics, the pilot will be evaluated after a year, with the goal of expanding TAP offerings and extending them to developing countries in other parts of the world— for example, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America, in addition to other African nations.
Standards are a key element in delivering good-quality and beneficial medicines and foods.
SUBSTANDARD and counterfeit drugs account for many poor-quality medicines circulating in global markets, particularly in resource-limited countries. In these countries, economically motivated interests can override fear of enforcement, which is often limited or weak. As more poor-quality medicines make their way into markets in developing countries, there is a higher risk to the health of people exposed to them. With infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and malaria prevalent in these regions, poor-quality products may bring little or no relief to patients and may contribute to resistance to treatments for which there are no practical alternatives. Additionally, patients may begin to lose confidence in the public health system, making them reluctant to seek proper medical help when most needed. Under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Agency for International Development in which USP is funded to provide technical assistance to developing countries, the Promoting the Quality of Medicines (PQM) program works with governments in more than 30 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Russia to help evaluate and improve a country’s readiness and capacity in ensuring good-quality medicines for such infectious diseases as tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and malaria. PQM recently launched the Medicines Quality Database, a collection of data on medicine samples tested for their quality as well as the commercial sources in which they were acquired. The availability of tools, such as this free, public database that provides quick and easy access to information on medicines tested for their authenticity, is key to raising awareness of and controlling the distribution of poorquality medicines across national borders. Clearly, public health can no longer be seen as nation-specific. Borders are porous, manufacturing is global, and neither supply chains nor diseases are confined to one country. Given this reality, interna-
tional collaboration is essential in ongoing efforts to ensure the widest possible access to quality medicines and foods. In the coming years, USP will continue to amplify its standards globally and to add new products and services connected with standards, and we are advancing to more open access to those standards. USP’s standards must integrate well with global food and drug standards, and these are continuously challenged by the need to harmonize. Science can show the way here; harmonization has been extremely difficult for classical pharmacopeial approaches but becomes much easier through concepts arising from metrology. Indeed, USP is challenged not just to look five or 10 years out but to 2050 and beyond. Will there be a world medicines agency and/or a world pharmacopeia?
Such concepts are emerging rapidly, and it seems likely that some will see realization in the 21st century. If we look to our past in the U.S., we see a time when trains ran on tracks of different sizes, and rail cars had to be moved from one set of wheels to another. Can we tolerate such inefficiencies in standards for medicine and food quality in a future of increasing resource and environmental constraints? Clearly the answer is no. So globalization and harmonization of international quality standards for medicines and foods must continue to evolve. They must remain grounded, however, in the principle that practitioners working privately, partnering wherever possible with governments, manufacturers, and other stakeholders, provide a good—even optimal—solution for advancing public standards. ◾
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TWENTY YEARS OF GREEN CHEMISTRY Chemists have worked hard to BUILD AWARENESS of and reduce hazardous chemical use over the past two decades PAUL ANASTAS, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
IT'S WHAT CHEMISTS DO: When a prob-
lem is identified, chemists come together to address it. They have revolutionized approaches to our most pressing challenges—from disease, to food production, to energy, and beyond. In all cases, chemists have made miraculous contributions. But 20 years ago, when the field of green chemistry was first defined and crystallized, a door was opened to a whole new set of possibilities. For two decades, chemists have used green chemistry principles to approach society’s most fundamental challenges in new and innovative ways. By 1991, there was widespread concern over potential adverse impacts on human health and the environment from the processes, by-products, waste, pollution, and industrial chemicals in our daily lives. It was time for action. Rather than continue deferring to litigators, legislators, and regulators to reactively handle these critical problems, members of the chemistry community unified around a common goal: to design chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances. The concept of green chemistry has stood the test of time. It captures the essence of excellent research that has been conducted and transformed into countless business and environmental successes over the course of two decades. It is important to note that green chemistry could not have advanced or thrived without the brilliant work in the field of chemistry that preceded it. Green chemistry is built upon foundational and revolutionary advances in areas such as catalysis, atom-economical synthesis, degradable materials, alternative solvents, and many other disciplines that existed prior to the field’s inception. But green chemistry brought a cohesion
to the field that resulted in major scientific breakthroughs and new kinds of synergies. In just 20 years, the field has produced thousands of scientific papers; research networks in more than 30 countries on every settled continent have been formed; at least four new international scientific journals have been published; and new fundamental scientific areas have been introduced including green solvents, biobased transformations and materials, alternative energy science, molecular self-assembly, efficient and elegant synthetic methodologies, next-generation catalyst design, and molecular design for reduced hazard. During the same time that green chemistry was crystallizing, another field, sustainability, was beginning to gain traction. At the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment & Development, in Rio de Janeiro, countries around the globe made commitments to the Rio Declaration on Environment & Development to help “protect the integrity of the global environmental and developmental system, recognizing the integral and interdependent nature of the Earth, our home.” Over the two decades that followed, the field of green chemistry and the goal of sustainability have grown in parallel. And as a result of their shared goals and perspectives, the activities, methods, and scientific foundations related to both fields have become inextricably intertwined. These linkages have repeatedly demonstrated that chemistry is essential to advancing the goal of a sustainable world. able civilization requires both a healthy environment and a healthy economy. Green chemistry has unequivocally demonstrated that creative scientific design can help achieve both of these goals simultaneously and for societal benefit. Sometimes it is difficult to isolate the direct global economic contributions of green chemistry because they are deeply connected to all aspects of the chemical enterprise. But the overarching progress toward a healthier economy, as a result of green chemistry activities, is undeniable. Major advances in electronics, personal care, pharmaceuticals, automotives, energy, agriculture, building materials, and more have been documented through recogni-
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SHUTTERSTOCK/C&EN
IT IS WIDELY recognized that a sustain-
tion programs, including the Presidential Sustainability requires the recognition Green Chemistry Challenge Awards in the that energy is linked to air is linked to water U.S. (see page 11) and similar programs elseis linked to agriculture is linked to health, where in the Americas, the European Union, and so on, across systems. It is based on and Asia. Since the inception of the Presithe idea that traditional reductionist apdential Green Chemistry Challenge in 1995, proaches, while extremely valuable, are not winners have annually eliminated nearly enough to fully understand our complex, 200 million lb of hazardous chemicals and dynamic, and integrated world. Green solvents, saved 21 billion gal of water, and eliminated 57 million lb GREEN ON THE RISE Scientific papers of carbon dioxide emissions. And including the term “green chemistry” in their they’ve done so with innovative titles have continuously increased over the past chemical technologies that have two decades. broad industrial applications. Today, green chemistry is simNumber of publications ply a good business choice. There 500 are no regulations that require 400 companies to meet environmental objectives through the use 300 of green chemistry principles. 200 Rather, chief executive officers of companies, managers of small 100 businesses, and entrepreneurs 0 around the world are voluntarily 1991 93 95 97 99 01 03 05 07 09 choosing to use green chemisNOTE: There was one publication each for the years 1992–94. try practices because in doing SOURCE: ISI Web of Knowledge so, they are able to exceed their regulatory responsibilities while increasing profits and market competichemistry is grounded in the same fundativeness. mental truth. It requires looking across Fittingly, when naming the new field systems and across life cycles to design of green chemistry, the word green was products and processes that are benign to carefully chosen for its ability to conjure both people and the environment. up both the color of the environment and the color of money in the U.S. Not only do TOO OFTEN, environmental protection green chemistry approaches reduce costs efforts have focused on waste without conassociated with pollution abatement, hazcern for the root cause of that waste, or on ardous waste disposal, material inputs, and the toxicity of a product without adequate long-term liabilities, but their incorporaattention to the feedstocks that make that tion at the design stage can also improve product. This has resulted in an incomplete product performance. Across the private understanding of problems, inadequate sector—from small patent-based businesssolutions, and in some cases unintended es to large international corporations—it consequences. is being demonstrated every day that green Many historical examples demonstrate chemistry is an economic and environmenthat failure to consider whole systems can tal win-win. lead to adverse unintended consequences. Disinfection by-products in purified water systems; biofuels that compete with food PAUL ANASTAS is assistant administrator for and feed; and persistent, bioaccumulating the Office of Research & Development at the pesticides used to increase crop yields are U.S. Environmental just a few of the traps that we have fallen Protection Agency and into by approaching production, manufacis currently on leave turing, and environmental protection in from the faculty of Yale fragmented ways. University. In 1991, he With green chemistry, solutions require coined and defined the consideration of all life-cycle stages. We term “green chemistry” now know that by working at a fundaand launched the first mental molecular level and considering research program in the whole systems at every stage, we are able field. to control the basic physical and chemical WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
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properties that are the basis for both desirable performance and adverse impacts. By homing in at the molecular level, green chemistry has shown that it is possible to largely design hazards out and that we can pursue the goal of sustainability without causing unintended consequences. For nearly a half-century, environmental protection has been marked by a series of standards. These minimum standards work by setting a pollution ceiling which, when crossed, invokes penalties usually enforceable by law. Too often, and perhaps counterintuitively, these standards have also set a virtual pollution floor. This floor encourages the attitude that as long as compliance is attained and ceilings are not broken, there is no reason to strive for progress. This mentality is not only misguided, but also antithetical to green chemistry and sustainability. Both fields have demonstrated that working to exceed pollution and toxicity standards can be tremendously valuable. They promote continuous improvement and encourage ambitious environmental goals. With its focus on the molecular level, green chemistry empowers us to confront health and environmental concerns as challenges of design. This approach expands the environmental protection toolbox beyond cleanups, mitigations, abatements, and treatments and frees us to pursue the kinds of proactive creation, discovery, development, invention, and transformative innovation necessary to design for sustainability. Transformative innovation does not occur by making existing approaches and methods cleaner or better; it calls for leapfrog discoveries that make the traditional approaches obsolete. For companies and academic researchers using the 12 principles of green chemistry as a framework for innovation, this is what makes the field truly exciting. GREEN CHEMISTRY recognizes that while incremental improve-
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ment is important, we can do better, and we need to. Although slightly increased efficiencies, reduced toxicities, and lower pollution emissions are important steps in the right direction, we know that to achieve a sustainable world, transformative thinking and leapfrog innovations will be required. As we celebrate the International Year of Chemistry and the 20th anniversary of green chemistry, we should reflect upon the astounding advancements made by chemistry as a whole and the progress made over the past two decades by the field of green chemistry. All of these accomplishments rely on the sheer brilliance and creativity that pervade the molecular science disciplines. Scanning the green chemistry landscape often reveals physical and synthetic chemists in collaboration with engineers and material, nano-, and bioscientists. This interdisciplinary approach has expanded even further as the field has embraced the roles of economists, environmentalists, educators, and policymakers by turning excellent science into practical and profitable reality. So, in celebrating the International Year of Chemistry, it is rea-
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TWELVE PRINCIPLES OF GREEN CHEMISTRY 1. Prevention It is better to prevent waste than to treat or clean up waste after it has been created. 2. Atom Economy Synthetic methods should be designed to maximize the incorporation of all materials used in the process into the final product. 3. Less Hazardous Chemical Syntheses Wherever practicable, synthetic methods should be designed to use and generate substances that possess little or no toxicity to human health and the environment. 4. Designing Safer Chemicals Chemical products should be designed to effect their desired function while minimizing their toxicity. 5. Safer Solvents and Auxiliaries The use of auxiliary substances (e.g., solvents, separation agents, etc.) should be made unnecessary wherever possible and innocuous when used. 6. Design for Energy Efficiency Energy requirements of chemical processes should be recognized for their environmental and economic impacts and should be minimized. If possible, synthetic methods should be conducted at ambient temperature and pressure. 7. Use of Renewable Feedstocks A raw material or feedstock should be renewable rather than depleting
whenever technically and economically practicable. 8. Reduce Derivatives Unnecessary derivatization (use of blocking groups, protection/deprotection, temporary modification of physical/chemical processes) should be minimized or avoided if possible, because such steps require additional reagents and can generate waste. 9. Catalysis Catalytic reagents (as selective as possible) are superior to stoichiometric reagents. 10. Design for Degradation Chemical products should be designed so that at the end of their function they break down into innocuous degradation products and do not persist in the environment. 11. Real-Time Analysis for Pollution Prevention Analytical methodologies need to be further developed to allow for real-time, in-process monitoring and control prior to the formation of hazardous substances. 12. Inherently Safer Chemistry for Accident Prevention Substances and the form of a substance used in a chemical process should be chosen to minimize the potential for chemical accidents, including releases, explosions, and fires.
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sonable to ask, “What is over the horizon for the field of green chemistry?” The answer might include some of the great scientific challenges the field is poised to address: ◾ How do we master molecular design for reduced hazard to human health and the environment? ◾ How do we achieve synergies across the 12 principles of green chemistry such that they are mutually reinforcing rather than trade-offs? ◾ How do we redefine performance of our chemical products and processes such that they are not merely attaining a narrow function but rather attaining that function without unintentional conse quences? ◾ How do we use these new design imperatives as a basis for transformative innovation rather than simply improving on the status quo? These challenges can only be addressed with the same creative spirit that has marked the history of chemistry as a whole—the enthusiasm and brilliance that we celebrate as part of this International Year of Chemistry. Perhaps the greatest challenge will be to make green chemistry systematic so that every student knows its tools and principles, and every practitioner knows its power for efficiency, effectiveness, and innovation. As has been said by green chemistry leaders around the world for two decades, the field will be successful when the term fades away because it is simply what we, as chemists, do. ◾
COVE R STORY
tions. That hunt culminated in an introduction in 1894 to French physicist Pierre Cu rie, then-laboratory chief of the Municipal School of Industrial Physics & ChemisFirst FEMALE CHEMISTRY NOBELIST owes much of her try, in Paris. The school’s director permitted Marie to work on the premises, where, success to fierce professional and personal determination in fact, Pierre had no satisfactory lab. NAOMI PASACHOFF, WILLIAMS COLLEGE As their relationship deepened, Pierre convinced Marie to pursue doctoral studies in Paris. Finances had forced him to postIN DECEMBER 1911, in the midst of a In spare moments as a governess, Maria pone his own doctoral work, despite the widely publicized adultery scandal, Marie studied physics and chemistry on her own fact that he had already codiscovered the Curie was urged to wait until her name had and, by correspondence with her father, piezoelectric effect and invented a sensibeen cleared before claiming the Nobel took an advanced math course. Here and tive scientific balance named in his honor. Prize in Chemistry. In defending her right there, she also gained some laboratory exJust months before their marriage in 1895 to claim the announced award, Curie wrote perience. After her father secured a decently and at Marie’s insistence, Pierre completed back insisting that “there is no connection paid position as director of a reform school, a doctorate by writing up the discoveries between my scientific work and ... he had already made about a basic private life.” In fact, however, there relationship between magnetic was a connection: Both professionproperties and temperature. (He had ally and personally, Curie’s life was completed the work some time begoverned by fierce determination fore, but had never written it up until coupled with a sense of personal Marie insisted he do so to obtain a dignity. doctorate.) The degree led to Pierre’s The International Year of Chempromotion to a professorship but not istry, 2011, marks the 100th anniverto an upgrade of his lab at the Musary of Marie Curie’s Nobel Prize “in nicipal School. recognition of her services to the adThe Curies’ first child, future Novancement of chemistry by the disbel Laureate Irène, was delivered by covery of the elements radium and Pierre’s physician father in 1897. After polonium, by the isolation of radium the sudden death of Pierre’s mother, and the study of the nature and comhis father moved in with the young pounds of this remarkable element.” family and helped raise Irène. Having Curie’s discoveries not only helped completed her commissioned rerevolutionize fundamental concepts search, Marie sought a thesis topic at of matter and energy but also inaugua time when no woman anywhere had rated the use of radiation for medical completed a scientific doctorate. She research and treatment. This year’s decided to study rays emitted by uracelebration provides a welcome nium compounds, whose ability to opportunity to reflect on this great fog a photographic plate, even when scientist’s career and legacy. the rays were emitted in darkness, Maria Skłodowska was born in was accidentally discovered in 1896 1867 in Warsaw. The Polish city was by French physicist Henri Becquerel. under control of czarist Russia, Pierre adapted the Curie electromEXPERIMENTING determined to eradicate Polish national he was able to contribute to his eter to enable Marie to measure the identity. After her mother’s premature daughters’ studies. In the fall of Marie Curie in faint currents given off by the rays. chemistry death from tuberculosis, Maria and her 1891, Maria began studies at the her In her 1923 memoir, Marie exlaboratory at the siblings were raised by their father, who had Sorbonne in Paris, where she Radium Institute plained that her measurements sugtaught high school math and physics until changed her name to its French of Paris, 1921. gested a revolutionary hypothesis: his dismissal for pro-Polish beliefs. Maria, equivalent, Marie. “My experiments proved that the who graduated at the top of her high school Despite a lack of fluency in radiation of uranium compounds ... class, hoped to get an advanced degree; her technical French and inadequate formal is an atomic property of the element urasister Bronislawa (Bronya) wanted meditraining in math and science, within three nium ... and depends neither on conditions cal training. Women, however, were barred years Marie completed, with distinction, of chemical combination, nor on external from the University of Warsaw. Maria the equivalent of master’s degrees in both circumstances, such as light and temperaagreed to help subsidize Bronya’s medical physics and math. A commission from the ture.” By April 1898, her subsequent tests education in Paris by working as a governSociety for the Encouragement of National of the other known elements revealed that ess; when Bronya was professionally esIndustry led her to search for lab space so thorium compounds also emitted Becquertablished, she would contribute to Maria’s she could relate the magnetic properties of el rays. She coined the term “radioactivity,” education. several steels to their chemical composifrom the Latin word for ray, to describe the CURIE MUSEUM/ACJC COLLECTION
MARIE CURIE
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behavior of uranium and FAMILY The Skłodowska thorium. When Marie’s research children (from left) Sophia, revealed that pitchblende Bronislawa, and chalcolite, two urani- Maria, Joseph, um ores, were much more Helena, 1872. radioactive than pure uranium, Pierre joined her in the search for more undiscovered radioactive elements. Their hunt turned up polonium and radium in 1898. After these discoveries, Pierre concentrated on investigating radium’s physical properties, and Marie did chemical experiments to facilitate the preparation of pure compounds containing newly found elements. It would take more than three years for her to isolate a tenth of a gram of pure radium chloride. She never succeeded in isolating polonium, which has a half-life of only 138 days. The reasons for her failure were not understood until Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy published their theory of radioactive decay in 1903. Pierre, meanwhile, discovered that radium emits heat spontaneously and that its emissions can damage living tissue, a discovery that
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inaugurated the use of radioactive treatments for cancer and other ailments. To augment their income, Pierre accepted an appointment as the physics chair to a Sorbonne program for medical NAOMI PASACHOFF is a research associate
at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. She is the author of the American Institute of Physics’ website Marie Curie and the Science of Radioactivity, based on her 1996 Oxford University Press book of the same name.
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students. The appointment came without provision for laboratory facilities, so the Curies continued their radioactivity research at the Municipal School, where Pierre also continued to teach. Marie, whose research was unfunded, took a paid position as the first woman lecturer at France’s elite teacher-training institute for women; she was also the first to include lab work in the institute’s physics curriculum. In June 1903, Marie defended her thesis, “Research on Radioactive Substances,” which, her examiners claimed, contributed more to scientific knowledge than any previous thesis ever published. Six months later, Becquerel and both Curies were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for “their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel.” THE CURIES’ ill health, which they refused
to attribute to the radiation, kept them from traveling to Stockholm until June 1905 for the obligatory lecture describing their work’s importance. Speaking on behalf of both, Pierre revealed that, despite the perhaps “more fertile” explanation offered by Rutherford and Soddy, he and Marie maintained that “it is not absurd to suppose that space is constantly traversed by very penetrating radiations which certain substances would be capable of capturing in flight.” But by the time she delivered her own Nobel lecture, “Radium and the New Concepts in Chemistry,” in 1911, Marie acknowledged that Rutherford’s work “has provided a backbone for the new science, in the form of a very precise theory admirably suited to the study of the phenomena.” The physics prize led to Pierre’s professorship at the Sorbonne and to Marie’s appointment as salaried laboratory chief. Shortly after their move to the Sorbonne, their second daughter, Eve, was born. Marie soon returned to research and to teaching at the teacher-training institute. By spring 1906, the couple believed that they were making progress in their attempt to measure the radioactive gas emitted by radium. Then, tragedy struck. On a rainy April afternoon, Pierre was killed in a traffic accident. The following month, the Sorbonne offered Marie Pierre’s academic position, which she accepted with the hope of establishing a research institute in his
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honor. Curie, the Sorbonne’s first woman professor, eventually succeeded in creating that institution, the Radium Institute. Over the next four years, she isolated radium metal, published a comprehensive textbook on radioactivity, and secured the right to define the curie—the international standard for radium emissions—for use in industrial and medical applications. For nearly all of 1912, however, Curie was a stranger to her lab. The cause was the aforementioned scandal, which erupted after the publication of rumors of her romantic entanglement with Paul Langevin, a brilliant former pupil of Pierre’s. Langevin, who had taken over Curie’s position at the teacher-training school, was unhappily married to a woman who resented what she perceived as his commitment to science over family. While Curie was attending an international conference of physicists in Brussels, where she was the only woman, the right-wing press published intimate letters she and Langevin had exchanged, falsely hinting, among other things, that Pierre’s death was no accident but a suicide caused by his wife’s infidelity. While the scandal grew, Curie received a telegram from the Nobel committee announcing the award of her chemistry prize. But an influential Swedish scientist on the committee urged her to decline it until the
institute was ready to open in August 1914, World War I intervened. Determined to put X-ray technology to use in military hospitals, Curie, assisted by Irène, ran a radiology service to help physicians locate bullets, shrapnel, and broken bones. Not completely aware of the dangers of overexposure to Xrays, the mother-daughter team took inadequate precautions, wearing cloth gloves, occasionally separating themselves from the equipment with small metal screens, and avoiding direct beams whenever possible. scandal abated. If Curie had been TEAMWORK Pierre Curie subsequently trained and Marie Curie less insistent that she had every about 150 female radiological asin the “discovery intention of accepting the acsistants at the Radium Institute; shed” at the school colade, which celebrated her sciof Industrial Physics Irène, then a Sorbonne student, & Chemistry in entific achievement and not her assisted. Curie also established personal relationships, she might Paris, 1898. a military radiotherapy sernot have become the first of a still vice, using radon—a radioacsmall group of individuals ever tive gas emitted as radium to have won a second Nobel Prize. After decays—sealed in thin glass tubes, which, mustering the spirit to deliver an impreswhen placed inside needles strategically sive Nobel lecture, Curie suffered a lengthy positioned within patients’ bodies, could period of ill health and depression, returndestroy diseased tissue. After the war’s end ing to the lab in December 1912. With the in November 1918, Curie also offered radiscandal behind her, she never had another ology courses to U.S. soldiers through the romantic attachment. She and Langevin reRadium Institute. mained friends; her granddaughter Hélène Despite her distrust of journalists, and his grandson Michel would later marry Curie granted an interview in 1920 to U.S. and pursue scientific careers of their own. women’s magazine editor Marie Mattingly Curie dedicated most of the rest of her (Missy) Meloney. Shocked to learn that life to the Radium Institute. Although the Curie, discoverer of radium, had only 1 g
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COVE R STORY
CU RIE MUSEU M/ACJC CO L L ECT IO N
in her laboratory, while U.S. research and medical institutions had about 50 times as much, Meloney organized a six-week tour of the U.S. in 1921 for Curie to raise money for the Radium Institute. Educated U.S. women hoped the tour would prove that women could play an important role in science. Curie, however, found little time in her schedule to meet with U.S. women scientists. She was nonplussed by the coeds she encountered, who seemed lacking in the commitment to science that had driven her. Curie’s visit may have worsened scientific opportunities for aspiring U.S. women scientists by providing a new rationale for discrimination. U.S. universities now justified their failure to hire women scientists on the grounds that they failed to live up to the high standard set by the double Nobel Laureate. The Marie Curie Radium Campaign succeeded on its own terms, however, yielding for Curie’s institute a second gram of radium, costly equipment and ores, as well as money. DIRECTING THE INSTITUTE replaced
research as the defining purpose of Curie’s life. Under her directorship, it became one of four major world centers for radioactivity research. Although she always included some women on her research staff, Curie was no feminist. Despite her personal devotion to research, she told her daughter Eve, “What I want for women and young girls is a simple family life and some work that will interest them.” Still, several women did significant research at the Radium Institute, including Marguerite Perey, who discovered the element francium, and Irène, who in collaboration with her husband, Frédéric Joliot, discovered artificial radioactivity some months before Curie’s death. Curie, however, was not necessarily a better employer of women than male institute heads of her day, including Edward Pickering at the Harvard College Observatory, who paid WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
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low wages to female assistants hired to do the tedious classification of photographic plates. Many of the women in Curie’s lab were assigned similarly detail-oriented but ultimately boring, repetitive, and uncreative tasks. Pickering, however, paid women for their labor, while Curie exploited the gratis efforts of many women volunteers. As Curie’s health declined over the final 14 years of her life, she refused to acknowledge a possible link between her health and radiation exposure. On July 4, 1934, Curie died in a sanatorium in Switzerland from what the sanatorium director called “an aplastic pernicious anemia,” probably caused by “a long accumulation of radiations.” For more than 60 years she lay in a cemetery alongside Pierre’s remains. In 1995, however, their remains were transferred X-RAYS Marie (right) to the Panthéon, and Irène Curie France’s national at the Hoogstade mausoleum. Curie hospital with a newly installed X-ray thus became the first woman whose own machine, 1915. achievements merited her burial alongside France’s most important men. At the time of the transfer, researchers analyzed the radium levels in her original coffin. They concluded that the levels were too low to account for her death. The current theory, therefore, is that Curie died not from the radium she handled with bare hands—and often sucked up with pipettes to transfer from container to container— but rather from exposure to X-rays during the war. Among the 159 individuals to have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Curie is the first of only four females. The women prize winners to follow her are her daughter Irène (1935), Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1964), and Ada E. Yonath (2009). One wonders how many women chemists will be so honored over the coming century, and what role personal and professional determination may play in their achieving this most prestigious of all awards. ◾
