When Linda Tuttle was diagnosed with breast cancer, she never imagined her experience would inspire her colleagues to design new treatments to tackle the disease.
An administrative assistant in the Department of Chemistry at Wake Forest University, Tuttle was more accustomed to talking to faculty and staff about meetings and course loads – not doctors' appointments and treatment plans.
But after her 2009 diagnosis, Tuttle's use of tamoxifen, a drug commonly used to treat breast cancer, inspired medicinal chemist Ulrich Bierbach to develop a targeted therapy that delivers a sneak attack to the disease, similar to a Trojan horse.