Brussels, 27/11/2001 (Agence Europe) - The Descartes Prize 2001 was awarded, in the presence of Commissioner Philippe Busquin and the president of the Research Council, François-Xavier de Donnéa, to two research products that have produced major results in the health and fine chemicals sector. The two projects share the prize awarded by the European Commission for the sum of one million euros. EUR 700,000 will go to the research network that has allowed a new therapeutic road to be opened for treating AIDs; EUR 300,000 will be a reward for new asymmetrical catalysts in fine chemistry.
Coordinated by Professor Jan Balzarini (K.U. Leuven, Belgium), the research network (composed of teams from Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom), which worked on the HIV virus, has identified several new inhibitors of the reverse transcriptase (the enzyme which determines replication of the retrovirus). One of these substances, the tenofovir, is soon to be approved by the American FDA for marketing. In the chemicals sector, the network involves scientists from the United .Kingdom, Germany, Russia and Armenia, who have made substantial progress in the development of asymmetrical catalysis for the chemicals industry. The project, headed by Dr Michael North (King's College, UK), has allowed the discovery of 50 new catalysts including one that has already been patented, and is the subject of negotiations for a license with a major European manufacturer of fine chemical substances used above all in the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries.