Scientific work should make sense and help people

We feature in this issue an article dedicated to Professor Antonín Holý – the renowned Czech chemist of international acclaim who discovered preparations that cure millions of patients worldwide – who died on July 16, 2012 at age 75, the same day the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a drug Prof. Holý helped to create, Truvada, for treating HIV. Preparations developed by Antonín Holý are among the most efficient and also accessible medicines for treating victims of AIDS, smallpox virus, shingles, eye inflammation and hepatitis B.
Professor Holý began working at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry in 1960. After three years he transferred to the Institute’s new laboratory of nucleic acids chemistry, which he led for twenty years. He was Director of the Institute for eight years (1994–2002). A milestone in Holý’s career was in 1976 when he met Erik de Clercq, the Belgian virologist at the Leuven University. This began very effective cooperation on a new group of potential antiviral drugs. Their focus was on acyclic nucleoside phosphonates, several of which they successfully transposed to medicines (Vistide, Hepsera, Viread, Truvada, Atripla) in cooperation with the U.S. pharmaceutical partner, Gilead Sciences. Dr. Holý not only developed the preparations but was also able to find partners to make the necessary biological tests and the companies to produce the medicines. The preparations he developed have become the basis of a modern treatment of a number of serious diseases. Despite all the international attention his important research brought him, Professor Holý remained a modest individual, who throughout his life placed particular emphasis on conscientious scientific work. He considered himself to be mainly a scientific employee, even when Director of the IOCB of the ASCR. “Personally, I would not have advanced in my work to where I am today in any other organization than the Academy of Sciences,” he declared several years ago.
Antonín Holý was one of the most successful Czech scientists who also lectured internationally. His most influential discoveries have yielded a successful treatment for AIDS and type B viral hepatitis. His research dealt with the chemistry of nucleic acids analogs and he registered more than 60 patents and co-authored 600 scientific papers. His work has been cited more than 10,000 times.