People of ASP

Jim McAlpine was born in tropical North Queensland and grew up in almost all of the eastern states of Australia. He received a B.Sc. (Hons., 1962), M.Sc. (1964) and a Ph.D. (1968) from the Univ. New England with Noel Riggs, on the stereochemistry of natural products from the New South Wales bitter vine, Piptocalyx moorei. A postdoc at Northwestern Univ. on the mode of action and biosynthesis of the erythromycins segued into a research position in the Pharmaceuticals Division of Abbott Laboratories, where Jim spent 24 years devoted to the discovery of principally anti-infectives and anticancer agents. From 1980-1996 he headed up Abbott’s natural product discovery efforts, which yielded a large number of novel bioactive microbial secondary metabolites and a series of 9- dihydrotaxol analogs inspired by the discovery of the parent from Taxus brevifolia. He was a member of ASP’s Taxol Historical Committee, which, prior to the 2000 ASP meeting in Seattle, scoped out the collection sight of the first T. brevifolia samples and chose a nearby location in the La Wis Wis campground, populated with Taxus, for a historical marker. From 1996-2002 he was Vice President of Chemistry at Phytera Inc., working on manipulated plant cell cultures and marine derived microbes, and from 2002-2008 he was with Ecopia BioSciences Inc (later Thallion Pharmaceuticals Inc.) concentrating on the discovery of microbial secondary metabolites via analysis of the biosynthetic genes of the producing organism. As president of ASP he worked with committee chairs Nick Oberlies and Eric Schmidt to revamp the 45 year old constitution of the Society and the establish the rank of ASP Fellow. (JM)