After a long illness, Professor Antonín Holý, one of the most important Czech scientists of the 20th century, died on Monday, 16 July 2012. He would have celebrated his 76th birthday on 1 September this year. Antonín Holý, whose professional career was connected particularly with the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry (IOCB) of the Academy of Sciences of the CR, discovered new antiviral drugs, which help cure millions of people all over the world. These substances are the basis for the production of the most effective medicines for AIDS available so far as well as medicines for smallpox, herpes zoster, viral infections of the eye membrane or hepatitis B.
Despite all of the international fame of the excellent chemist, Prof. Holý remained a modest
individual, who throughout his life placed an emphasis particularly on conscientious scientific
work. He felt himself to be mainly a scientific employee, namely even when he was the Director of
the IOCB of the ASCR. ‘Personally, I would not have advanced in my work all the way to where I am
today in another organization than the Academy of Sciences’ he announced several years ago.
Antonín Holý joined the IOCB, ASCR, in 1960 with an honor’s degree in Chemistry from the
Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University. After three years, the starting scientist
transferred to a new laboratory of the chemistry of nucleic acids. He then led this section for
twenty years. We can label the meeting of Prof. Holý with the young Belgian virologist Erik de
Clerq from Leuven University in 1976 as crucial, when the exceptionally productive cooperation of
the laboratories of the IOCB, ASCR, and the Rega Institute in Belgium on a new group of potential
antiviral drugs began to develop. The researchers focused their attention on a group of so-called
acyclic phophonate nucleosides which proved to be promising. In cooperation with the American
pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences (Vistide, Hepsera, Viread, Truvada, Atripla), they managed
to successfully transfer several substances into medicinal form.
Prof. Holý then not only managed to prepare effective substances but knew how to acquire
partners for their biological testing and then also commercial partners for the preparation of the
medicines. That is how ‘his’ substances became the basis for modern therapies of many serious
illnesses.
The passing of Prof. Holý is an enormous loss not only for the Academy of Sciences of the CR
but also for all of Czech and without exaggeration also global science.
Photo: Stanislava Kyselová (Akademický bulletin) and Dorothea Bylica
Prepared by: Department of Media Communication of the Head Office of the ASCR and the Institute
of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the ASCR
16 Jul 2012
