International Year of Chemistry 2011: Chemistry, Pharmaceuticals, and Damien Hirst's Pharmacy

[摘要] Pharmaceuticals affect the lives of an ever-increasing number of people. Global spending on prescription drugs in 2006 was $643 billion (1), and in 2009, 3.9 billion drug prescriptions were filled in the US (2). Although pharmacy is an ancient art, the pharmaceutical industry, in historical terms, is young. For example, an extract from the willow tree (which contains salicylic acid) was known to the ancient Greeks, but acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) was synthesized only in 1897. Chemistry, biochemistry, and molecular biology have played major roles in the development of the modern pharmaceutical industry, which now makes medicines with enormous interventional potential, sometimes associated with considerable risk of side effects. Pharmaceutical companies started to grow late in the 19th century. In the 1920s and 1930s, the main achievements were the production of insulin and penicillin. Then came the birth control pill, the hypotensive drugs, and the later “blockbuster” drugs, such as Valium, Prozac, and the statins. Anticancer drugs and compounds for the treatment of AIDS are the newer classes. The thalidomide tragedy in the 1960s led to more stringent …

[学科分类] 过敏症与临床免疫学