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THE
FOUNDING FATHER OF DRUG METABOLISM
Professor R. Tecwyn Williams
 Imagine
a world where your doctor can prescribe you a drug that is tailored to
your body to provide maximum effect and minimum side effects. That world
is getting closer. As we enter the
twenty-first century and the human genome project nears its completion,
one of the major aims of scientists and physicians is to examine an
individual's genetic make-up to determine which specific drugs to use
for disease treatment since we metabolise drugs differently. The field
is known as pharmacogenetics and should revolutionise patient
care in the hopefully near future. As one prominent US scientist
recently said, "The outcome of pharmacogenetics research has the
potential to improve the health of all......by making the medicines of
today and tomorrow safer and more effective for everyone"
Although the advances in
modern molecular biology have proved vital in helping to realise this
endeavour, much of the basis for this revolution in medical treatment
was established by a young inquisitive man who become the first
scientist to really study how drugs are metabolised in a living body. Richard
Tecwyn Williams, or RT as he was more often known in the scientific
community, was born the first of five children (the others were Martha,
Samuel, John, and Emrys) on February 20th 1909 in Abertillery. His
parents were from Tan-y-grisiau in north Wales and he grew up speaking
Welsh. He loved every thing about Wales and Abertillery and its language
and culture were always important to him and his family. His mother was
artistic, able and articulate and it was her influence that persuaded
Tecwyn to seek further education and a career as a teacher. As he would
say in later life to his children, Wales had three great things -
'Teachers, Preachers and Coal'. His brother Samuel studied science at
Exeter University but died in 1936 from TB only 23 years old, soon after
obtaining his degree in 1934. His next brother John became a teacher as
well as an artist and poet in South Wales and was a member of the Gwent
Anthology Society whilst Emrys had a distinguished career as a senior
official in the Post Office.
Tecwyn went to Gelli Crug
secondary school in Abertillery from where he won a scholarship to the
higher grade County School in the town. Although he had previously
experimented with elementary chemical sets it was there that he really
consolidated his interest and fascination with chemistry. His general
scholastic record was excellent and he won the War Memorial Prize
awarded for the 'highest academic attainment of the year'. He was also
active in sport and like so many fellow countrymen was good at rugby. He
won his school colours and was chosen to play for his county fifteen.
From Abertillery County School Tecwyn went on to University College,
Cardiff to study chemistry and physiology and was awarded his B.Sc.
degree in 1928. After this he never went back to Abertillery to live but
always visited his parents and sister Martha, who married Charlie
Bryant, the newsagent and behind whose house in Powell Street he would
climb the mountain to collect wimberries on holidays to Abertillery with
his children, Peter, Stephen, Josephine, Maria and Clare from his
marriage to Josephine Sullivan in 1937.
In 1931, he published the
structure of glucuronic acid in the leading scientific journal, Nature,
which stimulated his interest in the metabolism of foreign compounds
such as the sulphonamide antibiotics. In particular, the discovery by
Gerhard Domagk, who went on to win the Nobel Prize, that the
anti-bacterial activity Prontosil, the first real antibiotic, was due to
its metabolic conversion in the body to the sulphonamide, spurred great
interest in the processes of metabolism and their importance in the fate
of drugs and other foreign chemicals. 
In 1947, Williams
published a book on the detoxication of foreign compounds based on much
of his work and that of others and he initiated research into drug
metabolism at St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in London in 1949 when
he took up the Chair of Biochemistry. Further studies in the 1950s,
including work on the metabolism of thalidomide added substantially to
this knowledge, and led to the publication in 1959 of an expanded
version of "Detoxication Mechanisms", a book described as
"a marvel of organisation and enlightenment" (see - http://www.issx.org/hisaug.html).
Importantly, Williams proposed correctly that foreign compounds were
metabolised in two distinct phases.
His academic record was
vast with honorary degrees from Paris, Germany, Nigeria and an Honorary
D.Sc from Wales in 1976. In 1967, he became a Fellow of the Royal
Society. He won the 8th CIBA Medal of the Biochemical Society, UK 1972
and was even an honorary member of The Mark Twain Society USA in 1977.
He worked on many committees, both national and international, and it
was a sad loss to the scientific world when he passed away after a brave
fight with cancer in 1979. After
his death, one of his colleagues paid a fulsome tribute declaring him to
be "a true scholar" whose great strength was the ability to
reduce complex issues to practical simple terms. Tecwyn Williams was
truly one of the greatest men ever to have come from the Welsh mining
town of Abertillery and his legacy should be a world where drug
treatments will be safer and better.
I
am very much indebted to Clare Jeffrey (nee Williams), one of Tecwyn
Williams' daughters, for her help in compiling this story. For further
information on Tecwyn Williams, the following websites, from where
information was also drawn, might be of use:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/scifiles/interviewsub/flashbackwilliamsrt.shtml
http://www.issx.org/hisaug.html
http://www.bioanalytical.com/info/calendar/2000/field.html
TYLERI TALES
Contents:
 THE
HORROR OF 1921 - THE HAROLD JONES MURDERS
THE
FOUNDING FATHER OF DRUG METABOLISM - the story of Professor RT
Williams, FRS
THE
BLAINA RIOTS OF 1935 - Desperation and unrest in the Ebbw Fach
valley (by Martyn Thomas)
THE
MODEST, HARD MAN - Jim Webb, Wales rugby star of the Golden era
THE
MAN WHO BOWLED W. G. GRACE FOR A DUCK - Abertillery cricket
memories of the 1890s
THE
WAR HERO WHO TESTED THE BRITISH H-BOMB - Air Vice Marshall
Wilfred Oulton
THE
MARIE STOPES CONNECTION - Britain's first-ever hospital birth
control clinic opens at Abertillery
THE
REDOUBTABLE DAGGARS - A remarkable tale of an extraordinary
Abertillery family (by David Daggar)
THE
ABERBEEG GHOST
HEROES
OF WORLD WAR ONE
THE
"LIB" CLUB - BRITAIN'S BEST SNOOKER TEAM
(by Graham Bennett)
CAMERA'S
GREATEST MAGICIAN - the humble beginnings of Angus McBean
Coming
soon:
THE
TRAGEDY OF SIX BELLS - the terrible pit disaster of 1960
A
CHARITABLE ACCIDENT - Eddie Price, founder of the Tenovus
charity
THREE
LIONS IN THE SHIRT - Pask, Morgan, and Lewis, stars of the Green
& Whites
THE
MEN WHO BECAME SAINTS
THE
MAN IN THE MIDDLE
AHEAD
OF HER TIME - The extraordinary story of Beatrice Green
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