Bruce Eliot Maryanoff FRSC (born February 26, 1947, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American medicinal and organic chemist.
Maryanoff received a B.S. degree in chemistry in 1969, and a PhD degree in organic chemistry in 1972, both from Drexel University. From 1972 to 1974 Maryanoff was a postdoctoral fellow in the department of chemistry at Princeton University. He joined McNeil Laboratories, Inc., a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, in 1974 and advanced on the scientific ladder in various Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical units to the highest scientific position in the company. Maryanoff retired from Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development, Spring House, Pennsylvania, in January 2010. He is now affiliated with The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California and is a Distinguished Professor at the Baruch S. Blumberg Institute, Doylestown, Pennsylvania. He served as associate editor for the journal ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters from 2009-2020. He is married to Dr. Cynthia A. Maryanoff.
Maryanoff has been active in the fields of medicinal chemistry and organic chemistry. He is an inventor of topiramate,[1] a unique sugar sulfamate drug, which has been marketed worldwide for the treatment of epilepsy and migraine, attaining annual sales of more than $2 billion. Topiramate is also a principal component of the antiobesity drug Qsymia. Maryanoff is an internationally renowned expert in drug design and drug discovery, especially in the application of protein structure-based drug design. He made seminal contributions to understanding the stereochemistry and mechanism of the Wittig reaction; adapted the cobalt-catalyzed alkyne trimerization to the synthesis of macrocycles; and devised novel peptides that undergo self-assembly to mimic native collagen structurally and functionally. Maryanoff is an author on 280 scientific publications, including several books (editor), book chapters, and review articles. He is an inventor on 100 issued U.S. patents, has presented over 185 invited lectures worldwide, and mentored 11 postdoctoral associates. Maryanoff organized and edited a special memorial issue of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry to honor the memory of Dr. Paul Janssen (2005) and has served on numerous editorial advisory boards for scientific journals and research grant review committees.