[The history of antibiotics]

Abstract

The development of chemical compounds for the treatment of infectious diseases may be divided into three phases: a) the discovery in the 1600s in South America of alkaloid extracts from the bark of the cinchona tree and from the dried root of the ipecacuanha bush, which proved effective against, respectively, malaria (quinine) and amoebic dysentery (emetine); b) the development of synthetic drugs, which mostly took place in Germany, starting with Paul Ehrlich's (1854-1915) discovery of salvarsan (1909), and crowned with Gerhard Domagk's (1895-1964) discovery of the sulfonamides (1930s); and c) the discovery of antibiotics. The prime example of the latter is the development of penicillin in the late 1920s following a discovery by a solitary research scientist who never worked in a team and never as part of a research programme. It took another ten years or so before drug-quality penicillin was produced, with research now dependent on being conducted in large collaborative teams, frequently between universities and wealthy industrial companies. The search for new antibiotics began in earnest in the latter half of the 1940s and was mostly based on soil microorganisms. Many new antibiotics were discovered in this period, which may be termed «the golden age of antibiotics». Over the past three decades, the development of new antibiotics has largely stalled, while antibiotic resistance has increased. This situation may require new strategies for the treatment of infectious diseases.