The Meienhofer Award is named in honor of Dr. Johannes Meienhofer, one of the leading peptide scientists of the 20th century and a pioneer of the modern chemical biology field.

Dr. Johannes Meienhofer was born in Dresden, Germany in 1929, receiving his B.S in Chemistry from the University of Heidelberg in 1952. He earned his Ph.D. at the same university under the direction of Prof. H. Zahn. His postdoctoral research training was under Prof. Vincent du Vigneaud at Cornell Medical College and with Prof. Choh Hao Li at UCSF. After a brief return to Germany and a stay at Bayer, Meienhofer returned to the U.S. in 1965 to become Head of the Laboratory of Peptide and Protein Chemistry at the Sidney Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Dr. Meienhofer was recruited to Hoffman La Roche (HLR) in 1973 by Dr. Arnold Brossi, Director of the Chemistry Division, and Dr. Sidney Udenfriend, Director of Roche Institute of Molecular Biology, where he assumed the leadership of the research group “Bio-Organic Chemistry”, focusing on peptide chemistry.

In December 1963, under his leadership and “his drive”, Dr. Meienhofer and the “Insulin Group” at the DWI at the University of Aachen, Germany, succeeded in achieving the “first total synthesis of Insulin”. This was a milestone achievement in peptide and protein synthesis and his group was one of 3 groups worldwide to succeed in this endeavor.

At the Sidney Farber Cancer Institute, he had several notable achievements including the total synthesis of actinomycin D, with extensive SAR work on this family of anticancer drugs.

During Dr. Meienhofer’s leadership role at Roche, the peptide group made a number of important technological advances in peptide chemistry and hormone pharmacology, in essence being a frontrunner of modern field of chemical biology.
>> Introduction of liquid ammonia as a solvent for catalytic hydrogenolysis of Cbz groups from Cys containing peptides
>> The use of 3,4-dehydroproline as a synthon for the synthesis of tritiated peptides for in vivo pharmacology
>> The incorporation of N-(2-aminoethyl)glycine into peptides to improve their intestinal absorption
>> The isolation, structure determination, and synthesis of thymosin a1, the first fully characterize peptide from the thymus gland
>> The large-scale solution-phase synthesis of thymosin a1 was accomplished in his group and is considered a model synthesis for large-scale preparation.

One of the two lasting contributions was the innovation of “milder” chemistry for SPPS, which at the time the Boc/Bzl strategy was the state of the art. Meienhofer applied Carpino’s Fmoc group to stepwise SPPS, in conjugation with mildly acid-labile side-chain and anchorage chemistries to give rise to Fmoc/tBu SPPS. The impact of this work on the synthesis of peptide pharmaceuticals can not be overstated.

Dr. Meienhofer second seminal contribution was his scholarly work in the editing of the nine-volume series, The Peptides: Analysis, Synthesis and Biology, which appeared between 1979 and 1987.

Dr. Meienhofer was very active in the American Peptide Symposium. He organized the Third APS in Boston in 1972, which was the first Peptide Symposium open to everyone worldwide. This highly successful symposium became a model for subsequent symposia, both in America and Europe.

Many thanks to Dr. Waleed Danho for providing the biographical information about Dr. Meienhofer.