Abstract
PROF. GERHARD DOMAGK, who has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine for 1939, is the pathologist to the medical and biological research laboratories of the Bayer Company of Elberfeld. Domagk was comparatively little known, beyond the range of those familiar with the work of that institution, until, nearly five years ago, homade a discovery which has led to one of the most rapid and remarkable advances on record in therapeutic science and practice. The late Paul Ehrlich began his researches in chemotherapy with the attempt to find substances which would deal directly, as disinfectants, with bacterial infections in the living body. He, like many others who have followed, abandoned what seemed to be a hopeless quest, and turned his attention to the discovery of chemothera-peutic remedies for infections due to protozoa and spirochætes, the most important outcome being the discovery of salvarsan. It had almost come to be assumed that bacterial infections were beyond the reach of chemotherapy, though Morgenroth's ‘Optochin’ and its allies had given some hope of eventual success. Domagk appears to have examined a series of dyes for their action on streptococcal infoctions in the living body, irrespective of a lack of disinfectant properties outside it. In January 1935 he described the remedial effect on streptococcal infections in mice of a red dye, named ‘Prontosil’, an amide of chrysoidine, which had been prepared by Mietzsch and Klarer, chemists on the staff of the Bayer Company. Some confirmatory clinical results were obtained, but the first organized trial of ‘Prontosil’ on a uniform series of cases of streptococcal infection in man was made by Colebrook in Great Britain.
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Prof. G. Domagk. Nature 144, 777 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144777b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144777b0