Jerome P. Horwitz, a researcher who created the drug AZT (azidothymidine), died on September 6, The New York Times reports. He was 93. He first developed the drug in 1964 hoping it would cure cancer, but after it failed he set it aside without patenting it. In the mid-1980s, the pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome (a predecessor of GlaxoSmithKline) tested AZT as a treatment for people with AIDS. The company received a patent for it after the drug was found to be effective, which made AZT the first HIV drug approved by the United States.

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