Jerome P. Horwitz | AZT developer, 93

Jerome P. Horwitz, 93, a scientific researcher who created AZT in 1964 in the hope that it would cure cancer but who entered the medical pantheon decades later when AZT became the first successful drug treatment for people with AIDS, died on Sept. 6 in Bloomfield Township, Mich.

His wife, Sharon Horwitz, confirmed his death, which had not been widely reported until last week.

Dr. Horwitz never achieved much fame and did not earn a penny for making the AZT compound. The riches - billions of dollars eventually - went to the drug company that tested it, patented it and, in 1986, won federal approval for it as the first treatment proven to prolong AIDS patients' lives.

Dr. Horwitz told interviewers that when AZT (short for azidothymidine) had failed as a cancer drug, he literally put it away on a shelf in disappointment and moved on to explore other ideas, never bothering to patent it.

To console himself, he half-kiddingly told colleagues at Wayne State University's cancer research center in Detroit that AZT and several similar drugs he had developed were "a very interesting set of compounds that were waiting for the right disease."

That set of compounds not only proved useful 22 years later in combating full-blown AIDS; it also defined a new approach to attacking disease by stealth.

Dr. Horwitz called the family of compounds he and his colleagues had developed "dideoxythymidines." All were synthetic forms of components of DNA known as nucleosides, a building block of genetic material. The researchers had injected AZT into cancer cells, hoping it would act like a Trojan Horse to hinder cell growth by confusing the DNA's real nucleosides.

The stealth approach did not work against cancer, but it provided the foundation for the development of antiviral drugs now used in treating the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), as well as hepatitis and herpes.

The approval of AZT for treating AIDS made Dr. Horwitz briefly famous. Newspapers wrote about him and ABC World News Tonight profiled him as a "Person of the Week." But for Dr. Horwitz, the publicity was soured by a loss of potential income - for him and for his research center - because of their failure to get a patent.

Dr. Horwitz received his bachelor's degree in chemistry at the University of Detroit in 1942 and a master's degree there two years later. He earned his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1948 at the University of Michigan.

Besides his wife, his survivors include two daughtersand five grandchildren.

- N.Y. Times News Service