Blumberg Professor Nicholas Meanwell chosen for top award by the International Society for Antiviral Research
Nicholas A. Meanwell, PhD, former pharmaceutical industry scientist and executive and now distinguished professor at the Baruch S. Blumberg Institute, has been selected as the recipient of the 2024 Antonin Holý Award by the International Society for Antiviral Research (ISAR).
Dr. Meanwell was chosen for this prestigious award, which is one of ISAR’s top honors, for his influential and long career in the pharmaceutical industry. According to ISAR, the award annual goes to “a senior chemist of international stature, an outstanding contributor to the field of medicinal chemistry who has made significant contributions that directly or tangentially advanced antiviral drug discovery.”
Patrick Y-S. Lam, PhD, also a Distinguished Professor at the Blumberg Institute, said: “Nick Meanwell is absolutely deserving of this award, based on his accomplishments and his selfless efforts to educate the next generation of medicinal chemists. We are fortunate that he has chosen to be affiliated with the Blumberg Institute.”
Dr. Meanwell is very well known as a distinguished medicinal chemist and for his leadership contributing to advances in the areas of hepatitis C (HCV) and HIV therapeutics. These efforts produced the marketed HCV NS5A inhibitor, daclatasvir, the NS3/4A protease inhibitor, asunaprevir, the NS5B allosteric inhibitor, beclabuvir and the HIV-1 attachment inhibitor fostemsavir, which is currently marketed by ViiV Healthcare as Rukobia. The discovery and development of fostemsavir was recently recognized by the American Chemical Society with a Heroes of Chemistry award.
Dr. Meanwell received his doctorate from The University of Sheffield (England) in 1976, then went to Wayne State University for his postdoctoral studies. In 1982, he joined Bristol Myers Pharmaceutical R&D as a research scientist at their Indiana facility and later the company’s preclinical drug discovery research site in Wallingford, CT. In 2018, Dr. Meanwell moved to the Bristol Myers Squibb site in Princeton, N.J., where he served as Scientific Vice President.
Dr. Meanwell is currently delivering a series of lectures on “Topics in Drug Design” (more here) and helps the drug discovery and development programs of the Institute.
About the Baruch S. Blumberg Institute An independent, nonprofit research organization, the Blumberg Institute was launched in 2003 by the Hepatitis B Foundation to advance its research mission. Today, the Institute is one of the nation’s leading centers for translational research in hepatitis B and liver cancer. The Institute supports drug discovery, biomarker discovery and translational biotechnology around common research themes such as chronic hepatitis, liver disease and liver cancer in an environment conducive to interaction, collaboration and focus. The Blumberg Institute is located in the Pennsylvania Biotechnology Center, which it manages, near Doylestown, Pa. For more, go to www.blumberginstitute.org and follow us on Twitter @BlumbergInstit1.