Draft:Zrinka Tamburašev

Biography
Zrinka Tamburašev was born in Sisak, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, in 1921. She graduated in 1948 from the Chemical-Technological Department of the Technical Faculty in Zagreb and earned her doctorate in 1965. She joined PLIVA in 1957, where she made several discoveries and patents in departments of microbiology, biochemistry, and biotechnology. She was repeatedly recognized for her innovations and rationalizations, and for the isolation of the antibiotic oxytetracycline, she received the City of Zagreb Award. Zrinka Tamburašev was one of a team of four inventors of the antibiotic azithromycin, contributing to one of greater successes of "PLIVA" and the Croatian pharmaceutical industry.

Zrinka Tamburašev passed away on April 24, 2003, in Zagreb, Croatia, at the age of 82.

Working at PLIVA
She worked at the Research Institute of the pharmaceutical company PLIVA in Zagreb, where she led the group for semisynthetic macrolides from 1972 to 1974 and the Department for Natural Compounds from 1974 to 1978, after which she headed research in the field of basic raw materials.

She developed a method for isolating the antibiotic oxytetracycline in its industrial production, dealt with chemical transformations of antibiotics of the tetracycline order and erythromycin, and in 1974, together with Slobodan Đokić, Gabrijela Kobrehel, and Gorjana Lazarevski, began work on the synthesis of individual stages for the preparation of a new macrolide antibiotic, later named azithromycin.

In the mid-1960s, she worked with Slobodan Đokić on erythromycin A derivatives and on sulfonamide derivatives of erythromycylamine, with the idea of combining the properties of erythromycin and sulfonamides. In 1974 she was named the head of the natural products department. She began work on the synthesis of individual phases for the preparation of azithromycin, and the results of this research challenged the previous understanding of the macrocyclic ring of erythromycin as the bearer of the antibacterial activity of macrolides. In collaboration with Slobodan Đokić, Gorjana Radobolja-Lazarevski, and Gabrijela Kobrehel, she developed azithromycin (an erythromycin derivative) from 1979 to 1981, the active substance of an antibiotic that was launched in 1988 under the name Sumamed (and from 1991 on the American market as Zithromax).

She devised a method for isolating the antibiotic oxytetracycline in its industrial production and dealt with the chemical transformations of tetracycline order antibiotics and erythromycin. She is a co-author of patents that protected the preparation of oximes of erythromycin A and erythromycylamine, important intermediates in the synthesis of second-generation macrolide antibiotics (azithromycin, clarithromycin, roxithromycin, and dirithromycin).

Awards
Following the discovery of azithromycin, she became the recipient of the City of Zagreb Award for 1959, the PLIVA Award for 1996, the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts Award for 1997, and the Croatian Chamber of Economy's Golden Marten Award for Lifetime Achievement for 1998. In 1998 she also received the Nagrade HAZU-a.

Patents
Zrinka Tamburasev has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).