Alice Motion
Motion in October 2022
Born
Alice Elizabeth Williamson

(1984-10-28) 28 October 1984
NationalityBritish
Alma mater
Scientific career
Fields
InstitutionsUniversity of Sydney
Doctoral advisorMatthew J. Gaunt
Other academic advisors
Websitewww.alicemotion.com

Alice Elizabeth Motion (born Alice Williamson,[1] 28 October 1984) is a British chemist, science communicator, and associate professor at the School of Chemistry, University of Sydney.[2] She is the founder of the Breaking Good project which encourages high school and undergraduate students to take part in research that can benefit human health.[3] In 2018, the Breaking Good project was a finalist on the Google.org Impact Challenge.[4]

Education

Motion received her MChem from the University of Leeds in 2007 where she worked with Philip Kocienski on the synthesis of an N-acetylcolchinol-combretastatin hybrid. She moved to the University of Cambridge where she obtained her PhD in 2012 while working with Matthew J. Gaunt on strategies for asymmetric arylation.[5]

Career

In 2012, Motion moved to the University of Sydney in Australia to work with Matthew H. Todd on the Open Source Malaria project as Postdoctoral Research Fellow.[6] In 2014, she became a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at the same institution until her promotion to Lecturer in Chemical Education and Outreach at the same institution in 2017.

Pyrimethamine is a pharmaceutical medicine used in combination with leucovorin to treat toxoplasmosis and cystoisosporiasis and in combination with dapsone to prevent Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia in HIV/AIDS patients.[7][8] In 2015, Turing Pharmaceuticals drastically increased the price of pyrimethamine, which it markets as Daraprim, from about US$13.50 to $750 per tablet.[9][10] In response, Motion, along with her academic advisor, Matthew H. Todd, and the Open Source Malaria team led a small team of high school students from Sydney Grammar School to synthesise the drug.[11][12] The team produced 3.7 grams of pyrimethamine for under US$20, which would be worth between $US35,000 and $US110,000 in the United States according to Turing Pharmaceuticals's pricing.[13] This received significant media attention and was featured in The Guardian[12] and Time magazine,[14] and on ABC News (Australia),[13] the BBC,[15] and CNN.[16]

Motion, like her former research advisor, is a proponent of open science.[17][18][19][20][21] She believes that open science and research provides transparency of data and results that prevent unnecessary duplication.[22]

In December 2022 Motion was appointed interim director of Sydney Nano.[23]

Honours and awards

  • 2015 – ABC RN and UNSW Top 5 Under 40[24]
  • 2017 and 2018 – RACI Nyholm Lectureship: "Mother Nature's Molecules – the good, the bad and the ugly"[25]
  • 2020 – Celestino Eureka Prize for Promoting Understanding of Science[26]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Hobbs, Bernie (22 July 2020). "We need to open science up to everyone". ABC Radio National. Retrieved 3 December 2020.
  2. ↑ "Dr Alice Motion". sydney.edu.au. The University of Sydney. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
  3. ↑ "Breaking Good". Breaking Good Project. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
  4. ↑ "Google.org Impact Challenge Australia 2018". 2018. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
  5. ↑ Bigot, Aurélien; Williamson, Alice E.; Gaunt, Matthew J. (2011). "Enantioselective α-Arylation of N-Acyloxazolidinones with Copper(II)-bisoxazoline Catalysts and Diaryliodonium Salts". Journal of the American Chemical Society. 133 (35): 13778–13781. doi:10.1021/ja206047h. PMID 21848264. S2CID 2409722.
  6. ↑ Williamson, Alice E.; Todd, Matthew H.; et al. (2016). "Open Source Drug Discovery: Highly Potent Antimalarial Compounds Derived from the Tres Cantos Arylpyrroles". ACS Central Science. 2 (10): 687–701. doi:10.1021/acscentsci.6b00086. PMC 5084075. PMID 27800551.
  7. ↑ "Pyrimethamine". Drugs.com. 5 March 2019. Archived from the original on 26 April 2019. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  8. ↑ Hamilton, Richard J. (2015). Tarascon Pocket Pharmacopoeia 2015 Deluxe Lab-Coat Edition (16th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning. p. 54. ISBN 9781284057560.
  9. ↑ Timmerman, Luke (23 September 2015). "A Timeline of the Turing Pharma Controversy". Forbes. Archived from the original on 21 November 2018. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  10. ↑ Pollack, Andrew (24 November 2015). "Turing Refuses to Lower List Price of Toxoplasmosis Drug". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 26 April 2019. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  11. ↑ Reiner, Vivienne (30 November 2016). "Students make $750 drug cheaply with Open Source Malaria team". The University of Sydney. Retrieved 13 February 2019.
  12. 1 2 Davey, Melissa (1 December 2016). "Australian students recreate Martin Shkreli price-hike drug in school lab". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 February 2019.
  13. 1 2 Hunjan, Raveen (30 November 2016). "Daraprim drug's key ingredient recreated by high school students in Sydney for just $20". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. ABC News. Retrieved 12 February 2019.
  14. ↑ Lui, Kevin (2 December 2016). "Watch Martin Shkreli Respond to the School Kids Who Recreated His Drug for $2 a Dose". Time. Retrieved 23 April 2019.
  15. ↑ Dunlop, Greg (1 December 2016). "Martin Shkreli: Australian boys recreate life-saving drug". BBC News. Retrieved 12 February 2019.
  16. ↑ Roberts, Elizabeth (1 December 2016). "'Pharma Bro' Martin Shkreli meets his match in a group of Australian schoolboys". CNN. Retrieved 12 February 2019.
  17. ↑ Williamson, Alice (29 June 2015). "Open science: the future of research?". ABC News. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
  18. ↑ Todd, Matthew H.; Wells, Timothy N. C.; Olliaro, Piero; Willis, Paul; Badiola, Katrina A.; Robins, Michael; Woelfle, Michael; Williamson, Alice E.; Ylioja, Paul M.; Robertson, Murray N. (2013). "Open source drug discovery – A limited tutorial". Parasitology. 141 (1): 148–157. doi:10.1017/S0031182013001121. ISSN 0031-1820. PMC 3884843. PMID 23985301.
  19. ↑ Stevens, Katherine (4 October 2016). "Open-source science to enable drug discovery". ACS Axial. American Chemical Society. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
  20. ↑ Williamson, Alice (10 June 2014). "International team of scientists open sources search for malaria cure". Opensource.com. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
  21. ↑ Williamson, Alice; Todd, Matthew (14 September 2016). "Making drug development less secretive could lead to quicker, cheaper therapies". The Conversation. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
  22. ↑ Williamson, Alice (4 October 2017). "Open science – to benefit all" (Presentation to the Royal Institution of Great Britain). Rebroadcast by Paul Barclay (presenter) on Radio National's Big Ideas programme on 31 January 2018. Retrieved 24 April 2019 – via Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
  23. ↑ "Alice Motion appointed interim Sydney Nano Director". The University of Sydney. Retrieved 8 December 2022.
  24. ↑ Zukerman, Wendy (7 March 2015). "Top 5 Under 40 winners announced". Radio National. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
  25. ↑ "RACI Nyholm Youth Lecture Series". raci.org.au. Royal Australian Chemical Institute. 2019. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  26. ↑ "2020 Australian Museum Eureka Prize winners". The Australian Museum. Archived from the original on 24 November 2020. Retrieved 9 December 2020.
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