Society Awards and Honors
2004 Awards
PNNL Research Team Wins Industrial Innovation Award
Novella Bridges, Darrell Fisher and Anna Gutowska, research scientists at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, recently received the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) 2004 Regional Industrial Innovation Award. The award is given to individuals and teams whose creative innovations have contributed to the commercial success of their company and to the good of society.
The team is being honored for their collaborative work on development of radiolabeled composites, known as RadioGel™, as therapeutic agents for high dose treatment of solid cancers that cannot be removed surgically. RadioGel™ is an injectable solution that holds the therapeutic radioisotope in place at the target site for highly-localized radiation therapy of cancerous tissue with minimal effects on adjacent healthy tissues and normal organs. It has applications for treating cancers of the liver, pancreas, brain, neck and kidneys.
Bridges, Fisher and Gutowska were presented with the award in June at the ACS 59th Northwest/18th Rocky Mountain Regional Industrial Innovation Award Program in Logan, Utah.
Bridges specializes in inorganic chemistry. She earned a bachelor degree in chemistry from Jackson State University in 1994 and a doctorate degree in inorganic chemistry and organometallics from Louisiana State University in 2000.
Fisher has more than 30 years of experience in radioisotope science, and has more than 90 publications and four patents. He earned a bachelor degree in biology from the University of Utah in 1975, and masters and doctorate degrees in nuclear engineering sciences from the University of Florida in 1976 and 1978, respectively.
Gutowska has served as a leader in the field of polymer development. Her extensive research experience is focused on stimuli-sensitive polymer research with a major focus on medical applications. She holds four patents, with several pending, and has more than 24 publications. Gutowska earned a masters degree in chemistry from the University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland in 1978; and a doctorate in pharmaceutics and pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of Utah in 1994.
ACS was founded in 1876, and consists of more than 159,000 members at all degree levels in all fields of chemistry. ACS is actively involved in the science, education and public policy arenas.
PNNL (www.pnl.gov) is a DOE Office of Science research center that advances the fundamental understanding of complex systems and provides science-based solutions in national security, energy, chemistry, the biological sciences and environmental quality. Battelle, based in Columbus, Ohio, has operated PNNL for DOE since 1965. (announced 6/25/2004)