Surendra Nath Sehgal
Led the team at Ayerst that isolated rapamycin from an Easter Island soil bacterium and kept the program alive until the drug reached the clinic.
Ayerst Research Laboratories, Montreal (from 1959), later Wyeth · 1932–2003 (deceased)
Ayerst Research Laboratories (later Wyeth) (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) ↗
Surendra Nath Sehgal, known as Suren, was a scientist at Ayerst Research Laboratories in Montreal, a company that later became part of Wyeth. He died in 2003. His name is tied to the first description of rapamycin, a compound that later led researchers to the mTOR protein.
The 1975 paper in the Atlas reports a Streptomyces bacterium from a soil sample collected on Easter Island. The bacterium made a substance that stopped the growth of fungi such as Candida albicans. The team extracted it, obtained it in crystal form and named it rapamycin. It was first seen as an antifungal drug, and it had low toxicity in mice.
According to his biography, when the company's rapamycin program was cancelled, Sehgal kept bacterial samples in a freezer at home, and after the Ayerst and Wyeth merger he argued for restarting the work. Rapamycin was approved by the FDA in 1999 to prevent rejection of transplanted organs.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 1975 | M | Rapamycin (AY-22,989), a new antifungal antibiotic. I. Taxonomy of the producing streptomycete and isolation of the active principle VEZ1975 Reported the isolation of rapamycin from an Easter Island Streptomyces strain and its antifungal activity, the first step in the discovery that led to mTOR. Sehgal is the last author. |
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