Father of the carbohydrate revolution

Dr. Raymond "Sugar Ray" Lemieux

For one hundred years, chemists tried in vain to scale the "Mount Everest of organic chemistry." But reaching the summit came fairly easily to "Sugar Ray" Lemieux of Lac La Biche, when he synthesized sucrose, or common table sugar, in 1953. This remarkable feat amazed everyone in the world of science, but was only the first in a series of carbohydrate discoveries to change chemistry, and medicine, forever.

Having dominated his discipline for more than 40 years, Lemieux has been almost solely responsible for moving the once marginal study of carbohydrates into the mainstream of organic chemistry. In simple terms, he revealed how carbohydrates bind to proteins, a phenomenon crucial to "everything from cancer to embriogenesis," says University of Alberta colleague, Dr. Ole Hindsgaul.

It's a curious irony one of Canada's most distinguished scientists had no definite plans to attend university in his youth. Born in northern Alberta in 1920, he was the seventh child in a family of eight.

Before entering the second grade, Lemieux moved with his family to the Boyle Street area of Edmonton, then "an Irish-French-Ukrainian ghetto, where the main challenge was to avoid associations that could lead to reform school," he writes in his autobiography, Explorations with Sugars. While working at the Jasper Park Lodge one summer he met several university students. That's when he began thinking seriously about going to university himself. "I thought all you had to do to get a scholarship was to have high marks," he once remarked. "I learned from them that you also had to apply."

As a young man contemplating his future during the Depression, money was always an issue. And as far as Lemieux could tell, commercial chemists seemed to make decent salaries. Since second-year chemistry students were often paid a modest sum to perform demonstrations to freshmen, his choice of major fell quickly into focus. "In those days there were only two kinds of guys coming back to Edmonton with big cars: hockey players who made the NHL and scientists who made it in industry in the U.S.," he once told the Edmonton Journal.

Lemieux graduated with an honors degree in chemistry from the University of Alberta in 1943 and received his PhD from McGill in 1946. After a brief stint at Ohio State University, he worked at the University of Saskatchewan for two years before joining the Prairie Regional Laboratory of the National Research Council in 1949, where he became the first scientist to successfully synthesize sucrose in the laboratory in 1953.

But Lemieux's most significant breakthroughs were yet to come. After serving seven years as dean of pure and applied science at the University of Ottawa, he returned to Edmonton in 1961 to join the University of Alberta's chemistry department. Here he started on the path to what many consider the major accomplishment of his illustrious career-making possible the synthesis of complex carbohydrate structures called oligosaccharides. In the late '50s, chemists became aware these structures, which coat red blood cells and body tissue cells, were essential for cell to cell recognition and carried messages crucial to the control of many cellular functions. But because adequate quantities of natural oligosaccharides (even a milligram) were extremely difficult to obtain, studying them was virtually impossible. That hurdle was eliminated, however, when Lemieux found a way to make a synthetic version of the carbohydrate.

It may not sound like an earth-shattering breakthrough, but Lemieux had enough vision to recognize its considerable medical applications, specifically the use of the synthetic compound as an artificial antigen. When attached to proteins, oligosaccharides can be used to stimulate production of antibodies in the human body. Understanding the structure of these carbohydrates has made possible new antibiotics and blood reagents, drugs to prevent transplanted organ rejection, improved blood typing and grouping, as well as methods for the improved treatment of leukemia and hemophilia.

Firmly believing the university and province should reap the benefits of a new and promising biotechnology industry, he established three biochemical companies during his career, including R&L Molecular Research Ltd., Raylo Chemicals Ltd., and Chembiomed, which was recently taken over by Synsorb Biotech of Calgary. While in operation, these companies patented a number of antibiotic drugs and helped build Alberta's knowledge-based economy.

Lemieux's most recent work has focused on the role of water in molecular recognition, a hot new area of study this decade. According to Dr. Gary Horlick, the University of Alberta's chair of chemistry, we only now have technology sophisticated enough to take Lemieux's research to the next stage of discovery.

Were it not for the seminal work of Alberta's own carbohydrate giant, much current research in immunology would simply not be possible, a fact underscored by a long list of prestigious awards and honors, including memberships in the Royal Societies of Canada and London and an appointment to Officer of the Order of Canada. In May, he will receive Israel's Wolf Prize for Chemistry.