Stephen James Lippard (born October 12, 1940) is the Arthur Amos Noyes Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

[4] He has done pioneering work in understanding protein structure and synthesis, the enzymatic functions of methane monooxygenase (MMO), and the mechanisms of cisplatin anticancer drugs.

[11][2][12] His students are active in a wide range of areas, in part because "He delivers a strong message that you need to go to the frontier of science and pick interesting problems.

Purely inorganic substances such as iron are often required in essential organic reactions, e.g. oxygen binding in the hemoglobin family.

[16] He has made major contributions in a number of areas, including the development of platinum-based anticancer drugs such as the cisplatin family.

[22][23] Early work in Lippard's lab on the interaction of metal complexes with nucleic acids led to the discovery of the first metallo-intercalators and eventually to the understanding of the mechanisms of cisplatin.

Lippard and his students examined sequences of DNA and RNA and incorporated sulfur atoms into the sugar-phosphate backbone, where they selectively bound mercury or platinum complexes to specific positions.

[25] Jacqueline Barton and others have used electron micrography to show that the covalent binding of platinum complexes changes the supercoiling of the DNA, "bending and unwinding" the double helix.

[18][28][29] Further experiments have explored the mechanisms through which platinum drugs bind their biological targets and led to insights into their anticancer activity.

[24][33][34] Members of the Lippard laboratory studying macromolecular crystallography have explored the structure, mechanisms and activity of bacterial multicomponent monooxygenases.

Amy Rosenzweig determined the protein x-ray structure of the soluble form of methane monooxygenase (MMO) as Lippard's graduate student.

[2][36] Lippard has used X-ray diffraction and a variety of other methods to study such compounds, greatly expanding our understanding of their structure and function.

MMO is vital to Earth's carbon cycle, and knowledge of its structure may help to develop clean technologies for methanol-based fuels.

[46] Lippard is considered a founder of metalloneurochemistry,[4] the study of metal ions at the molecular level as they affect the brain and the nervous system.

[47] Working at the interface of inorganic chemistry and neuroscience, he has devised fluorescent imaging agents for studying mobile zinc and nitric oxide and their effects on neurotransmission and other forms of biological signaling.

[48][49][21] In 2011 Lippard founded Blend Therapeutics with Omid Cameron Farokhzad and Robert Langer, in Watertown, Massachusetts.

[52] Its proprietary drug candidates included BTP-114, a cisplatin prodrug, and BTP-277, a targeting ligand designed to bond selectively to tumor cells.

[75] Stephen moved to Washington, DC, in 2017, where he remains active in science, writing, consulting, and grandfathering, while expanding his harpsichord playing and cooking skills.