« Newly-Admitted Students Meeting | Main | Young Alum Happy Hour - Continental Midtown »
April 04, 2006
Wallace H. Carothers Award Lecture - Professor Alan Davison, MIT
Delaware Section of the American Chemical Society
April General Meeting
2006 Wallace H. Carothers Award Lecture
Professor Alan Davison
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Role of Technetium Chemistry in the
Design of Diagnostic Imaging Agents
Date: Tuesday, April 4, 2006
Location: The DuPont Country Club
1001 Rockland Road
Wilmington, DE 19803
http://www.dupontcountryclub.com
Time: 5:30 PM – Reception with hors d’oeuvres and cash bar
6:30 PM – Dinner
7:30 PM – Award Presentation and Carothers Lecture
Cost: $30 per person for Delaware ACS members and guest
$40 per person for non-ACS members
$15 per person for students
Dinner Choices: 8 oz. Filet Mignon with Sun-Dried Tomato and Truffle Sauce
Grilled Breast of Chicken “Mediterranean” with Preserved Lemon, Olives, and Tomato (served over Cous Cous)
Mushroom and Vegetable Cous Cous Strudel
For reservations or additional information, please contact John Gavenonis at john.gavenonis@usa.dupont.com (preferred) or 302-999-5600 before noon on Wednesday, March 29, 2006. Please indicate your dinner selection. If no preference is provided, Mushroom and Vegetable Cous Cous Strudel will be selected. Reservations not cancelled by Friday, March 31, 2006 will be billed.
Abstract
The importance of technetium radiopharmaceuticals as diagnostic imaging agents is, to a large part, due to the aqueous inorganic chemistry of this man-made element. A rational synthetic understanding of technetium chemistry has enhanced the field of nuclear medicine. An illustration of this is provided by the development of a technetium-based myocardial perfusion imaging agent that has become a very important tool in clinical nuclear cardiology. At the heart of this advance are octahedral homoleptic isonitrile complexes of technetium(I).
Biography
Having grown up in Wales, Davison earned his B.Sc. in chemistry from the University College of Swansea (1959). After completing his graduate studies with Nobel Laureate Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson, he obtained a Ph.D. in chemistry at Imperial College of Science and Technology (1962). Davison began his independent academic career in 1962 as an Instructor in Chemistry at Harvard University and joined the chemistry faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1964. Davison has made numerous contributions to various aspects of inorganic chemistry including organometallic, boron, coordination, and bioinorganic chemistries. His research led to the synthesis of a number of novel hydride and carbonyl complexes of transition metals, and in the 1960s, Davison and F. Albert Cotton co-authored a series of papers describing the first fluxional organometallic molecules.
“These discoveries, which would be defining to the careers of most, serve only as a backdrop to the contribution for which he is being honored… the invention of the entire class of technetium compounds from which Cardiolite® came, and the use of Cardiolite® as a myocardial perfusion agent,” notes MIT W.M. Keck Professor of Energy and Professor of Chemistry Daniel G. Nocera. Indeed, Davison’s investigations of technetium coordination chemistry guided Cardiolite® from initial discovery in 1981 to FDA approval in 1990. Cardiolite® is now the leading cardiac imaging agent in the world. It is the only heart imaging agent FDA-approved to non-invasively evaluate the heart’s pumping ability (function) and gauge the amount of blood flow to the heart muscle itself (perfusion). Cardiolite® topped $2 billion (USD) in cumulative sales in 2004, and is the single largest royalty earner in the entire MIT portfolio, providing even more revenue than the royalties associated with Professor John Sheehan’s patents describing synthetic penicillin.
Davison has authored or co-authored over 250 publications and is a co-inventor on nine patents. He is an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow (1967), a recipient of the Paul C. Aebersold Award for Outstanding Achievement in Basic Science Applied to Nuclear Medicine (1993), a recipient of the Ernest H. Swift Lectureship at the California Institute of Technology (1999), a Fellow of the Royal Society of London (2000), and a recipient of the American Chemical Society Award for Creative Invention (2006). After over 40 rewarding years at MIT, he became an emeritus Professor in June of 2005.
About the Wallace H. Carothers Award
The Delaware Section of the American Chemical Society presents the Carothers Award in recognition of outstanding contributions in industrial chemistry. It commemorates the pioneering work of Wallace H. Carothers, considered by many to be the father of industrial polymer chemistry. The list of past awardees includes such illustrious scientists as Edwin H. Land, Herman F. Mark, Paul J. Flory, Ralph F. Hirschmann, K. Barry Sharpless, and Robert S. Langer. This annual award is especially important for the ACS since it is an international industrial chemistry award given by a local section. Nominations are accepted on an on-going basis.
Posted by at April 4, 2006 05:30 PM