Winner of 2001 Merrifield Award - Garland R. Marshall

The Bruce Merrifield Award for outstanding career achievements in peptide research will be presented by the American Peptide Society to Garland R Marshall.

Garland R. Marshall is currently Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics and of Biomedical Engineering and a member of the Center for Computational Biology at Washington University Medical School in St. Louis, Missouri. He was born in San Angelo, Texas in 1940; graduated from Rusk High School (Rusk, Texas) in 1958; and the California Institute of Technology with a B.S. in biology in 1962. He received his Ph.D. in 1966 from the Rockefeller University and was immediately recruited to a faculty position at Washington University Medical School where he has remained, rising to Professorial rank in 1976.

Prof. Marshall has been a significant factor in the development of two important technologies that have revolutionized the practice of biological sciences. First was the development of solid-phase synthesis starting as the first graduate student in the laboratory of R. Bruce Merrifield, Nobel Laureate, during the initial development of peptide synthesis using a polymeric support. His second scientific area of significant impact was the development of molecular modeling and associated computer graphics approaches to three-dimensional structure-activity studies and the design of novel therapeutics. Starting in 1967 at Washington University, Marshall and his colleagues developed algorithms that allowed analysis of three-dimensional structures of sets of molecules active at the same receptor. From these analyses, predictive models were obtained which could be used to guide the synthesis of novel compounds as potential new drugs. In 1979, Marshall founded a company, Tripos (Nasdaq, TRPS), that further developed and marketed software in this area.

His scientific contributions to specific areas have also been significant. Marshall first described a peptide inhibitor of the angiotensin II, a hormone involved in hypertension. He has led the exploration of peptidomimetics and the use of chimeric amino acids in determining the receptor-bound conformation of peptides. Marshall pioneered the development of HIV protease inhibitors for the treatment of AIDS; the first crystal structure of HIV protease complexed with an inhibitor utilized the inhibitor MVT-101 from the Marshall lab. He has also shown through molecular simulations the dynamically nature of the helical conformation of peptides. Most recently, Marshall has experimentally determined the conformation of a peptide ligand when bound to a G-protein coupled receptor. Exploration of the molecular interaction between rhodopsin and its G-protein, transducin, and the mechanism of signal transduction is a current focus of his research. In the last few years, modeling of metals in biological systems has also become a research objective. To compliment this interest, Prof. Marshall founded a second company, MetaPhore Pharmaceuticals, in 1995 to develop novel ligands for metals through combinatorial chemistry for therapeutic applications. An enzyme mimetic of superoxide dismutase developed by MetaPhore entered clinical trials the first quarter of 2001.