Over at my other gig at the Pharma & Healthcare section of Forbes.com ( Drug From Sea Creature Proves Promising Against Ovarian Cancer : 2804 Views ) , I’ve been covering a few stories of new drugs and improvements on old drugs. Although I’m focusing on natural products like vancomycin and semi-synthetics like lurbinectedin, I’ve been thinking a bit about the stories behind the discoveries of all drugs.Part of my thinking has been driven by my current reading of Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs by Morton A. Meyers, MD, professor emeritus of radiology and internal medicine at SUNY–Stony Brook. Therein, I’m reading stories like that of Gerhard Domagk, who first showed that prontosil was an effective antibiotic in vivo but not in vitro because it liberates sulfanilamide when metabolized. The story was told in even greater detail in the superb Thomas Hager book, The Demon Under the Microscope.
This got me to thinking: I hear quite a bit about drug discovery stories in the U.S. but rarely about modern drugs that have been discovered elsewhere. The brain tumor drug, temozolomide, for example, was developed in the laboratory of Malcolm Stevens at Aston University building upon work of the late Tom Connors (expertly told by Kat Arney at Cancer Research UK last summer). But one rarely hears stories like these, even in pharmacology courses at pharmacy schools where the teaching is more likely to be chemistry-oriented.
So, chemistry world hivemind: What are your favorite stories of drug discovery and development that didn’t occur in the United States? Bonus points for natural products or semi-synthesis.