Renowned Chemist Delivers Annual Grollman Lecture

Professor from the University of Texas at Austin details his quest to create new therapeutics for the treatment of cancer and other diseases

By Becky Ceraul
May 22, 2008

Jonathan Sessler, PhD, was welcomed to the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy on May 5, where he delivered the annual Ellis S. Grollman Lecture in the Pharmaceutical Sciences. Dr. Sessler is the Rowland K. Pettit Centennial Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a co-founder of Pharmacyclics, Inc., a publicly traded company dedicated to developing biomedical applications of expanded porphyrins, particularly for cancer therapeutics.

“This is one of the highlights of the year for our department,” said Andrew Coop, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, in opening the lecture. “It’s an opportunity to hear from a distinguished lecturer about pharmaceutical sciences and its application to clinical practice.”

Dr. Sessler is a pioneer in the field of macrolomolecular chemistry and is well known for his work on biomedical applications of expanded porphyrins, which are molecules that can be used to target tumors as anti-cancer agents.

“I started at Texas in 1984 and had a shared interest in making compounds called porphyrins,” Dr. Sessler said. “We were successful at making many derivatives of this compound and have focused the majority of our work on ‘texaphyrin’ because it is cancer selective.”

Dr. Sessler’s work concentrates on targeting non-small cell lung cancer, which afflicts 90,000 people a year and for which there is currently no FDA approved treatment. During the lecture, Dr. Sessler detailed his journey into the development of a porphyrin-based drug to treat non-small cell lung cancer and the subsequent clinical trials that were conducted to test the drugs safety and efficacy.

Ellis Grollman was a 1926 graduate of the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy. He practiced as a hospital pharmacist at Johns Hopkins and Sinai Hospitals in Baltimore City and as a community pharmacist in Frederick, Ocean City, Gaithersburg and Annapolis. Mr. Grollman died in 1982. The Ellis Grollman Lecture in the Pharmaceutical Sciences was established in 1983 by his sister, Mrs. Evelyn Grollman Glick, as an endowed memorial. It brings outstanding leaders in the pharmaceutical and related basic sciences to speak to the School’s students and faculty.