Pharmacology Breakthroughs

ANTISEPTICS • John Lister (1827-1912)-

British surgeon who radically changed surgical practice with the introduction of antiseptics

• Lister’s antiseptic solution of carbolic acid was used to clean wounds and surgical cuts and to scrub surgeons hands

• Believed that infection was caused by airborne dust particles so he also sprayed the air with carbolic acid.

• Equipment is heated to a high temperature to make it bacteria free

• His discoveries become widely accepted by the 1880

• Introduced antiseptic cutgut ligatures

• Ligatures are strong threads used to sew surgical wounds together.

INSULIN • Sir Frederick Grant Banting (1891-1941) &

Charles Herbert Best discovered “insulin” a hormone used to control the diseased “Diabetes Mellitus”

• Diabetes Mellitus- when pancreas does not produce insulin to use the sugar in the blood

• Banting studied medicine at the university of Toronto in Canada and graduated in 1916.

• He was awarded the Military Cross for Heroism while serving in the medical corps in World War I (1914-1918)

• After the war Banting returned to practice medicine in London. In 1912 he went to the University of Toronto to do some research

• Charles Best became his assistant a medical student who is an expert in measuring blood sugar level

• In 1923 Banting received the Nobel Prize for Medicine

• 1923 Ontario Canada created the Banting and Best Department of Medical Research

Sir Frederick Grant Banting & Charles Herbert Best

The Discovery of Insulin

MAJOR HISTO COMPATIBILITY MAJOR HISTO COMPATIBILITY AGENTSAGENTS

• Rolf Zinkernagel - Swiss immunologist who discovered how the immune system recognizes virus in cell.

• He received a noble prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1966

• Born in Basel Switzerland on January 6,1944

• He attended the university of Basel from 1962-1968 studying in the faculty of medicine

• By end of 1973, Zinkernagel and Peter Doherty discovered that lymphocyte killer T-cell is activated to kill virus by (MHC) Major Histocompatibility antigens – awarded with Nobel Prize

• Their discovery opened up channels for fighting cancer, rheumatism, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis diabetes and other diseases

• Returned to Switzerland in 1979 to teach in the University of Zurich’s Department of Pathology

Rolf Zinkernagel

EPINEPHRINE • John Abel- American biochemist and

pharmacologist, teaching in the United States, the study of drugs called “materia medica” was largely a natural history of certain botanical substances that sought to describe their origins, forms, properties, and general actions.

• born on May 19 1857 in Cleveland Ohio.• he received an undergraduate degree from the

university of Michigan in 1883.• he married Mary Hinman, who would later play

an important role in establishing the field of home economics in the United States.

• Abel’s research was mainly biochemical in nature. In 1895 scientists in London had injected into animals an extract from adrenal gland and found out that it produced an instant rise in blood pressure.

• Abel worked on isolating the active substance that was found in this gland.

• In 1897, Abel announced that he had managed to isolate though not in its pure form, the active substance, which he called “Epinephrine”

• Abel develop what he called a vivid diffusion apparatus, which consisted of coiled tubes surrounded by a saline solution.

• It was a basis on this device that Abel demonstrated the presence of free amino acid in blood.

• Abel got back to work on hormones and sought to isolate the active agent in the pituitary gland.

• Abel died in Baltimore on may 26, 1938

John Abel

ILOSONE

• Dr. Abelardo Aguilar a Filipino doctor who helped discover a widely used antibiotic without receiving anything from the sale of the drug that earned billions of dollars for a giant US drug firm.

• The drug’s proprietary name is Ilotycin and Ilosone which is commonly known by its generic name erythromycin.

PENICILIN • Penicillin refers to any one of group of antibiotics

derived from the fungus “penicillium”. The action of natural penicillin was first observed in 1928 by British bacteriologist Alexander Fleming. Ten years later, penicillin was concentrated and studied by German biochemist Ernst Chain.

• Penicillin is effective against wide range of disease bearing microorganism including pneumococci, streptococci, gonococci, meningococci, clostridium, syphilis

• It has been successfully used to treat such deadly diseases like endocarditis, septicemia, gas gangrene, gonorrhea and scarlet fever.

Alexander Fleming and Ernst Chain

penicillium

SALVARSAN • Paul Ehrlich a german chemist-physician

developed a chemical treatment of syphilis in 1909 . It was named salvarsan meaning “that which saves by arsenic”

• Ehrlich brought news of his treatment to London, where Fleming became one of the very few physician to administer salvarsan.

• He did so with the new and difficult technique of intravenous injection. He soon such a busy practice he got the nicknamed “private 606”

• In 1920 Fleming discovered lysozyme, an enzyme occurring in many blood fluids such as tears.It had a natural antibacterial effect but not against the strongest infectious agent.

• in 1928, he noticed that a mold that grown in his petri dish killed the staph bacteria

• “penicillium notatum” mold from the penicillium family

Paul Ehrlich

Salvarsan treatment kit for syphilis, Germany, 1909-1912

Niacin/Pellagra • Joseph Goldberger was born on Austria Hungary in a

town now located in the Czech Republic. In 1912, Goldberger had been fighting tropical fevers, typhus, typhoid and other infectious outbreaks throughout the United states and the Caribbean. The surgeon general took note of his energy and success in 1914, appointed him to tackle the crisis of pellagra.

• A disease recently reaching epidemic proportion in the south. It affects the skin, mucous membrane, the central nervous system and other gastrointestinal tract. Symptoms are skin lesions, mouth ulcers, abdominal distention, diarrhea, memory impairment and mental confusion.

• Though extensive observation of pellagra stricken people, Goldberger noticed that diet seem to be the key. People who substituted on the common diet of poverty. “cornbread and molasses” seemed to get the disease. Goldberger conducted experiments with volunteers at Mississippi prison which offered conclusive evidence that poor nutrition was the culprit in causing pellagra.

• When Goldberger died, Conrad Elvehjem took his study and after much experimenting he found out that nicotinic acid or niacin, prevented and cured pellagra in dogs and in human.

Joseph Goldberger

Pellagra is a vitamin deficiency disease most commonly caused by a chronic lack of niacin (vitamin B3) in the diet.

NYSTATIN

• Elizabeth Lee Hazen and Rachel Fuller Brown developed and patented a wonder drug of the 20th century the world’s 1st successful fungus-antibiotic.

• After months of exchanging soil sample and information through the US mail, they invented

• “Nystatin” (named for NY STATE dept. of health), patented on June 25, 1857.

Elizabeth Lee Hazen and Rachel Fuller Brown

CRYSTAL STRUCTURES OF DRUG

• Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkins graduated from Oxford in 1932. She found a position in an x-ray crystallography lab studying biological crystals.

• Ten years later, she announced the structure of vitamin B12 and in 1964 she won the noble prized in Chemistry.

DIPTHERIA, ANTITOXIN, TRYPAN

• Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915) a German bacteriologist who led to his co-reception of the 1908 noble prize for physiology. He determined the dosages for diphtheria anti toxin of Emil Adolf Von Bearing. He then theorized that certain substances could act as magic bullet. Attacking only disease causing organism in the body and leaving the rest of the body unaffected.

• His subsequent discovery of the effectiveness of trypan dye in treating African sleeping sickness and his synthesis of salvarsan which was used against beginning of chemotheraphy.

Emil Adolf Von Behring• Bottle of Behring's

diphtheria remedy, Germany, 1914-1918

POLIO VACCINE

• Microbiologist Jonas Edward Salk developed on June 23 1995 the 1st vaccine effective against poliomyelitis.

• Albert Bruce Sabin- introduced oral vaccine in 1960

• Poliomyelitis-is an infectious viral disease that sometimes result in paralysis it is caused by anyone of three related viruses called polioviruses.

Jonas Edward Salk and Albert Bruce Sabin

POLIO• Poliomyelitis, often called polio or infantile

paralysis, is an acute viral infectious disease spread from person to person

• The term derives from the Greek poliós meaning "grey", myelós referring to the "spinal cord", and the suffix -itis, which denotes inflammation.

• the virus enters the central nervous system, infecting and destroying motor neurons, leading to muscle weakness and paralysis.

• In the United States, the 1952 polio epidemic became the worst outbreak in the nation's history. Of nearly 58,000 cases reported that year 3,145 died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis

LASER• Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of

Radiation, LASER (laser), is a mechanism for emitting light within the electromagnetic radiation region of the spectrum, via the process of stimulated emission.

• In 1957, Charles Hard Townes and Arthur Leonard Schawlow, then at Bell Labs, began a serious study of the infrared laser. As ideas developed, they abandoned infrared radiation to instead concentrate upon visible light. The concept originally was called an optical “maser”.

Uses• Medicine: surgery, laser healing, surgical treatment, eye

treatment, dentistry• Industry: Cutting, welding, marking parts• Defense: Marking targets, missile defense, alternative

to radar• Research: Spectroscopy• Product development/commercial: laser printers, CDs,

barcode scanners, thermometers, laser pointers, holograms.

• Laser lighting displays: Laser light shows• Laser skin procedures such as acne treatment, cellulite

reduction, and hair removal.