Reactions: Response to Trailblazers 2024, praise for C&EN, and reflections on chemistry education

Letters to the editor

Trailblazers 2024

Among historic trailblazers from Latin America in the Sept. 16/23, 2024, issue of C&EN (page 64), a key scientist, Miguel Ondetti, was omitted. He was an Argentine chemist who moved to the US and worked at the Squibb Institute for Medical Research in New Jersey. There he discovered the first angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor.

Scientists in South America had demonstrated that the venom of the South American pit viper, Bothrops jararaca, contained several peptides, which potentiated the effect of bradykinin that led to blood pressure drops observed after a viper’s bite. These bradykinin-potentiating peptides inhibited ACE. This therapeutic potential was noted by Ondetti and David Cushman, who used these peptides as a template to design captopril in 1975.

Making an orally bioavailable peptide was not considered feasible at that time, until captopril was designed, and this endeavor took several years of commitment. Importantly, captopril was the first therapeutic that was derived from computer modeling of peptides isolated from snake venom. This was the forerunner of many products that have since been developed for other indications from toxins and venoms of different animals. Thus, Ondetti led the team at Squibb that was the first to make a drug from a venom, the first to make an orally bioavailable peptidic drug, and the first to make an ACE inhibitor.

Captopril led to a new way to treat hypertension and was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 1982 and became a billion-dollar drug. Its success led to more potent ACE inhibitors. Together with Cushman, Ondetti won the Lasker award for this discovery in 1999. He became a vice president at the Squibb Institute for Medical Research in 1990 and retired in 1991 after the merger of Squibb with Bristol-Myers. Ondetti was also known in Princeton, New Jersey, for his exquisite fine white marble sculptures. Ondetti died on Aug. 23, 2004.

Prabhavathi Fernandes
Chapel Hill, North Carolina

It doesn’t matter the meaning you want to give to an upside-down map of Latin America; the fact is that people who look at it get the impression that you are making fun of the region. On top of that, the word revolution has a very bad meaning. Even 65 years after the Cuban Revolution, the country is experiencing effects from a destroyed economy and thousands of people in prison. Similarly in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and other Central American countries. And unfortunately, many governments had been moved to the left, as Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, etc.

I am very disgusted with this issue of C&EN.

Felix F. de la Vega
Houston

Praise for C&EN

I was elated to see the highlighted quote from Ann Kwong in the Sept. 30 issue of C&EN (page 28). Apparently, the word bullshit has appeared in the publication on at least five other occasions since 1982, but never in such a large font, and in red no less! I have been reading this magazine since the late ’70s and wonder if this might be a record. My mother reminded me often that “bullshit makes the grass grow,” and I am hoping to see the word used more often in the press, especially when politics or big business is being discussed.

On another note, the story on Charles “Boomer” Russell, aka Fatty Acid (brilliant!!), was terrific (C&EN, Sept. 30, 2024, page 40). I want to see Fatty Acid perform, and I expect the American Chemical Society to give her a grant to go on tour . . . no proposal needed. RuPaul should be jealous!

Mike Harmata
Columbia, Missouri

Chemistry education

Given the importance of chemistry in modern life, it should be unthinkable that a person could be graduated from college without a course in general chemistry or chemistry of contemporary issues. Think pharmaceuticals, nutrition, medicine, environment, pesticides, plastics.

Many ill-informed people, including politicians, attempt to talk about these subjects regularly and cause unnecessary alarm, among other things. The poor scientific literacy and even hostility to knowledge is apparent.

A few chemists on faculty could also be a resource and an intellectual nucleus.

Frederick Varricchio
Venice, Florida