Alice Motion

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]

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

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. Davey, Melissa (1 December 2016). "Australian students recreate Martin Shkreli price-hike drug in school lab". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 February 2019.
  13. 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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