Sheila DeWitt receives Gertrude Elion Medicinal Chemistry Award

The American Chemical Society Division of Medicinal Chemistry has awarded Sheila DeWitt the 2025 Gertrude Elion Medicinal Chemistry Award. DeWitt has devoted her career to work in the field of medicinal chemistry and its application to drug discovery and development. She has more than 35 years of experience working in pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. In her roles as corporate executive and entrepreneur, DeWitt founded two companies: Deuteria Pharmaceuticals and DeuteRx.

DeWitt has demonstrated excellence in leadership and has contributed game-changing research in the area of combinatorial chemistry to produce diverse organic compounds for high-throughput testing and in the application of deuterium substitution for hydrogen to stabilize stereochemically labile chiral centers in important drug molecules—mainly to improve on already marketed drugs.

“Her deuterium-enabled chiral switching research led to a major discovery for pioglitazone in that the deuterium-stabilized (R)-enantiomer (PXL065) was found to lack the racemate’s unfavorable PPAR-gamma agonist activity. Consequently, PXL065 was advanced to human clinical studies for treating nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), a serious unmet medical need,” says Bruce Maryanoff of Scripps Research, who nominated DeWitt for the award.

The award honors Gertrude Elion, who inspired others to achieve excellence and held a pioneering role in advancing drug discovery and development.

DeWitt will deliver a lecture at the MEDI Award Sessions on Aug. 17 at ACS Fall 2025, where she will receive an engraved recognition plaque. The award included a $6,000 honorarium and travel expenses incidental to receiving the award. For more information about the award, visit the ACS Division of Medicinal Chemistry’s website.