Name Kenneth Koe | ||
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Died October 7, 2015, Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, United States | ||
Billie Kenneth Koe (April 15, 1925 – October 7, 2015) was an American chemist of Chinese descent. He and Willard Welch developed sertraline, which was branded and sold as Zoloft by his longtime employer Pfizer starting in 1991.
Biography
He was born to Chinese immigrants Benjamin and Monta Jean Koe in Astoria, Oregon on April 15, 1925. Later the family moved to Portland, where Koe attended Reed College. He received a master's degree from the University of Washington and a doctorate from the California Institute of Technology. Koe joined Pfizer's Brooklyn laboratory in 1955, and started developing antibiotics. His research focus later shifted to uses of serotonin–norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors as well as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors in psychotherapeutic drugs and began work on what would become Zoloft with Welch in the 1970s. While Koe worked at Pfizer's headquarters in Groton, Connecticut and after he retired in 1995, he lived in Ledyard. Reed College honored Koe with the Howard Vollum Award in 2008, two years after the American Chemical Society gave Charles A. Harbert, Reinhard Sarges, Albert Weissman, Koe, and Welch the Award for Team Innovation. Koe died in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts on October 7, 2015, aged 90.