Zhifeng Ye, a 2005 MS graduate of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, was recently honored as a Hero of Chemistry by the American Chemical Society for her work on the development of a new drug that treats the underlying cause of cystic fibrosis (CF).
Ye is currently the senior technical operation manager at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Inc. She and her team were honored for the development of Kalydeco, a revolutionary new drug that treats the cause of CF by binding to the defective regulator protein leading to improved lung function.
Kalydeco is currently approved to treat CF patients with the G551D-CFTR protein defect, about four percent of CF patients in the United States. Additional studies are planned in the future to determine whether Kalydeco can help patients with other CF mutations, according to C&EN news.
“It’s been a big seller and a breakthrough in the pharmaceutical area. It’s great to have a student like Zhifeng from BYU being one of the key players in it,” said chemistry professor Merritt Andrus, who was Ye’s graduate advisor while she was at BYU.
Andrus noticed Ye’s talents early on in her master’s program.
“She was a very prepared, very serious student,” he said. “I wish she would have stayed on as a PhD student.”
Ye went straight from her graduate program to Vertex, a company founded by Stuart Schreiber, Andrus’ former advisor during his post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University.
“She didn’t do a PhD or a post-doctoral fellowship; she went right from school to industry,” Andrus said. “It was her training at BYU that let her do so well.”
The ACS Heroes of Chemistry program has recognized outstanding accomplishments by chemical scientists in industry since 1996. Vertex was one of four pharmaceutical companies recognized at this year’s awards ceremony.
“It’s a very prestigious thing,” Andrus said. “Most chemists work their whole career and never come close to anything like this.”