William Prusoff attended the
University of Miami. After receiving his
undergraduate degree in
chemistry, he obtained his
PhD from
Columbia University and later completed his
postdoctoral training in the laboratory of professor
Arnold Welch at
Case Western Reserve University. After Welch was recruited by
Yale to head the
Medical School's pharmacology department, Prusoff was invited to join the same department as an
assistant professor and was subsequently promoted to the rank of
professor. This relationship at Yale would span over the next 58 years, with William Prusoff becoming one of Yale's most well respected scientists and teachers. Prusoff spent most of his career studying
analogs of
thymidine, a
nucleoside building block of
DNA, with an eye toward developing therapeutic agents. By exploring analogs to thymidine for use as
antiviral drugs, his research created a new
scientific paradigm for
antiviral drug development. In the late 1950s, William Prusoff synthesized one of the first
thymidine analogs,
5-iododeoxyuridine. At the time, it was thought to be difficult to find antiviral drugs with a high
therapeutic index, but professor
Herbert E. Kaufman found that the compound could be used as an effective
topical treatment for
herpesvirus keratitis by disrupting the
virus's ability to reproduce. More significantly, though, this discovery was a scientific
game changer – it was the first time that a clinical antiviral drug had been shown to have selective antiviral activity if used properly. In the 1970s, Prusoff coformulated the
Cheng–Prusoff equation to calculate the absolute inhibition constant
Ki (IC50). In the 1980s, while the
AIDS epidemic was spreading and found to be caused by
HIV, William Prusoff and the late Dr. Tai-Shun Lin discovered that a compound synthesized by dr.
Jerome Horwitz had potent anti-HIV properties. The compound was originally named
D4T, and
Bristol-Myers Squibb developed and marketed this drug under its more common name,
Zerit. It became a key drug as part of the first combination therapy for treating AIDS. Realizing that this treatment could provide great benefits to those struggling with the growing HIV crisis in impoverished
Africa,
Doctors Without Borders and Yale students later lobbied Yale University and Bristol-Myers Squibb to make Zerit available at a low cost for the African market. Prusoff quickly joined the effort, even though it meant a loss of personal income. "We are not doing this to make money, we are interested in developing a compound that would be a benefit to society," he explained. The effort to make Zerit more affordable was a success: millions of people around the world benefited from Prusoff's research and humanitarian efforts. Though William Prusoff officially retired at age 70, he never stopped working and continued to be industrious. Until his death, his work as
professor emeritus concentrated on the potential for using
boronated-thymidine analogs as
sensitizing cancer agents for
neutron therapy. ==Prizes==