by Sam Roberts

Frank Palopoli, a chemist whose team of researchers invented Clomid, the world's most widely prescribed fertility drug for women, died on Saturday in Montgomery, Ohio. He was 94. The cause was heart failure, his son Frank said. Over nearly 50 years, millions of women have become pregnant because of the relatively inexpensive drug clomiphene citrate, which the William S. Merrell Company began marketing as Clomid in 1967.

The pill that Mr. Palopoli and his organic chemistry research team synthesized and patented is now sold generically and under other brand names, including Serophene. Among women whose only infertility problem is the failure of their ovaries to release egg cells during the menstrual cycle, as many as 80 percent who take the medicine will typically ovulate and be able to conceive naturally or through intrauterine insemination or in vitro fertilization.

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/