Jonathan Sessler (born 20 May 1956 in

Urbana, Illinois Urbana ( ) is a city in Champaign County, Illinois, United States, and its county seat. As of the 2020 census, Urbana had a population of 38,336. It is a principal city of the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, which had 236,000 residents i ...

) is a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...

The University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 students as of fall 2 ...

. He is notable for his pioneering work on expanded

porphyrin Porphyrins ( ) are heterocyclic, macrocyclic, organic compounds, composed of four modified pyrrole subunits interconnected at their α carbon atoms via methine bridges (). In vertebrates, an essential member of the porphyrin group is heme, w ...

s and their applications to biology and medicine. He is a co-founder of Pharmacyclics, Inc., a company that works with expanded porphyrins, and Anionics, Inc., which develops

anion An ion () is an atom or molecule with a net electrical charge. The charge of an electron is considered to be negative by convention and this charge is equal and opposite to the charge of a proton, which is considered to be positive by conven ...

recognition chemistry. Pharmacyclics was sold to AbbVie for $21 billion in 2015.

History and career

Sessler received his

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

in Chemistry in 1977 from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

and his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1982 from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

. He continued as a post-doctoral fellow at L' Université Louis Pasteur, and worked in

Kyoto, Japan Kyoto ( or ; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it the ninth-most pop ...

before becoming an assistant professor of chemistry at The University of Texas at Austin in 1984. He is a three-time Hodgkin's Lymphoma cancer survivor. He was treated for

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving Cell growth#Disorders, abnormal cell growth with the potential to Invasion (cancer), invade or Metastasis, spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Po ...

Stanford University Medical Center Stanford University Medical Center is a teaching hospital which includes Stanford Health Care and Stanford Children's Health. It serves as a private hospital for the Stanford University School of Medicine. In 2022–23, it was ranked by the U ...

during work on his Ph.D. Discussions with his colleagues regarding possible treatments eventually led to the discovery of so-called "

texaphyrin Texaphyrins are a family of heterocyclic, macrocyclic molecules that are porphyrin derivatives. They were first invented by University of Texas at Austin professor Jonathan Sessler and his group. The name texaphyrin arose because some of the mole ...

" molecules, named as such due a semblance to the shape of the five-pointed star in the State flag of Texasbr>10-Gallon Molecule Stomps Tumors
In 1996, Sessler described possible uses of these compounds in medicine in the ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences'' journal. He formed a company, Pharamcyclics, Inc., with Dr. Richard A. Miller whom treated him for his cancer. His company,which went

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öf ...

in 1995, licensed the technology behind "texaphyrins" from the university to develop commercial and medical uses for the molecules. The company was later acquired by Bob Duggan in the year 2008 as he became the largest shareholder of the company. Texasflag texaphyrin Rahulsoman

Sessler has written extensively, authoring or co-authoring over 600 publications. In addition, he has co-authored two books and edited another two. He holds more than 70 U.S.

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

s. Dr. Sessler has received many awards and much recognition, as a Sloan Fellow (1999), Fellow of the AAAS (1999), Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar (1999), ACS Cope Scholar (1999), recipient of the JSPS and Alexander von Humboldt Senior Fellowships (1999), and winner of the Izatt-Christensen Award (1999). Sessler has participated in hosting chemistry circuses on the UT campu
University Events , What Starts Here Changes the World
These circuses are held for different grade levels from elementary to college, and aim to expose students to "fun" aspects of chemistry. Sessler has also lectured on how the disease

Porphyria Porphyria ( or ) is a group of disorders in which substances called porphyrins build up in the body, adversely affecting the skin or nervous system. The types that affect the nervous system are also known as Porphyria#Acute porphyrias, acute p ...

, caused by a deficiency in porphyrins, may be related to the origin of myths about

vampire A vampire is a mythical creature that subsists by feeding on the Vitalism, vital essence (generally in the form of blood) of the living. In European folklore, vampires are undead, undead humanoid creatures that often visited loved ones and c ...

s and

werewolves In folklore, a werewolf (), or occasionally lycanthrope (from Ancient Greek ), is an individual who can shapeshift into a wolf, or especially in modern film, a therianthropic hybrid wolf–humanlike creature, either purposely or after bei ...

. In 2021, he was elected member of the U. S.

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

., entry in member directory:

References

External links

Jonathan L. Sessler
— Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, The University of Texas at Austin. Accessed 14 March 2006.
Company History & Overview
— Phaymacyclics.com. Accessed 14 March 2006.

— Stanford University. Accessed 14 March 2006.
"Interview: Discovering the Texas molecule"
- - Jonathan Sessler talks to The ''

Royal Society of Chemistry The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) is a learned society and professional association in the United Kingdom with the goal of "advancing the chemistry, chemical sciences". It was formed in 1980 from the amalgamation of the Chemical Society, the ...

'' about what motivated him to discover texaphyrin and about the aims of the companies he co-founded {{DEFAULTSORT:Sessler, Jonathan 1956 births Living people 21st-century American chemists University of Texas at Austin faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences