Gillies’ Polanyi Prize is a
repeat win for Chemistry

 

Dr. Beth Gillies

Polanyi Prize winner Dr. Beth Gillies

By Mitchell Zimmer

Dr. Beth Gillies’ search for methods to deliver anti-cancer drugs to specific targets has won her this year’s prestigious John Charles Polanyi Prize in Chemistry.

The $15,000 prizes are given to researchers in the early stages of their careers who are continuing post-doctoral studies in an Ontario university. The Government of Ontario established the fund in honor of the achievement of John Charles Polanyi who won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Like the Nobel Prizes, the Polanyi prizes are awarded in the areas of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and Economic Science.

This is the second year in a row where a new faculty member of the Chemistry Department has won the award. “I was surprised,” says Gillies, who has been at Western only since July 1. “I thought that there was no way they’d give this to Western two years in a row.”

Gillies completed an undergraduate chemistry degree at Queen’s University before taking her Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. She investigated using polymer and organic systems for direct delivery.

“We developed a system that can target anti-cancer drugs to tumours selectively and that actually worked out pretty well.”

Part of the strategy relied on the tumour’s lower pH, making them slightly more acidic than normal tissue. Gillies work exploited this difference in two ways.

One method involved formulating non-active versions of drugs by linking them to certain chemical groups. These inactive molecules are harmless as they circulate throughout the body until they come into contact with a tumour. Here, the acidic environment activates the drug. Another procedure involved enclosing a drug within small molecular capsules called micelles. These micelles then disintegrate in a tumour which releases the drug.

Gillies then went on to France for post-doctorate work in Bordeaux.

“There I worked on synthetic molecules that fold into helices which are a really important structural motif in biological systems.”

Since helix patterns are present in both proteins and DNA, “synthetic chemists are pretty interested in trying to find other types of molecules that can do this.”

In some ways her research here at Western continues along the same themes of developing and incorporating functions into new biomaterials. New projects include designing molecules that have antibiotic properties and collaborating with researchers in the Robarts Research Institute to make contrast agents for MRI.

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