Paul Zamecnik

Paul Zamecnik
Zamecnik in 1966
BornNovember 22, 1912 (1912-11-22)
DiedOctober 27, 2009 (2009-10-28) (aged 96)
Alma materDartmouth College
Harvard Medical School
Known forInventor of antisense therapeutics
FamilyJohn Stepan Zamecnik (great-uncle)
Scientific career
FieldsMolecular biology
InstitutionsHarvard Medical School

Paul Charles Zamecnik (November 22, 1912 – October 27, 2009) was an American scientist who played a central role in the early history of molecular biology. He was a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a senior scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Zamecnik pioneered the in vitro synthesis of proteins and helped elucidate the way cells generate proteins. With Mahlon Hoagland he co-discovered transfer RNA (tRNA).[1][2] Through his later work, he is credited as the inventor of antisense therapeutics.

Throughout his career, Zamecnik earned over a dozen US patents for his therapeutic techniques. Up until his death in 2009 he maintained a lab at MGH where he studied the application of synthetic oligonucleotides (antisense hybrids) for chemotherapeutic treatment of drug resistant and XDR tuberculosis in his later years.

  1. ^ Hoagland MB, Zamecnik PC, Stephenson ML (April 1957). "Intermediate Reactions In Protein Biosynthesis". Biochim Biophys Acta. 24 (1): 215–6. doi:10.1016/0006-3002(57)90175-0. PMID 13426231.
  2. ^ Hoagland MB, Stephenson ML, Scott JF, Hecht LI, Zamecnik PC (March 1958). "A Soluble Ribonucleic Acid Intermediate in Protein Synthesis" (PDF). J Biol Chem. 231 (1): 241–57. doi:10.1016/S0021-9258(19)77302-5. PMID 13538965.

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