Skip Navigation

This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Search for citing articles in:
ISI Web of Science (22)
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Disclaimer
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Greenwood, D.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Greenwood, D.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (1995) 36, 857-872
© 1995 The British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy

other

Conflicts of interest: the genesis of synthetic antimalarial agents in peace and war

David Greenwood*

Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE, UK

Received 12 April 1995; returned 16 June 1995; accepted 11 May 1995

*Permanent address: Division of Microbiology, Department of Clinical Laboratory Sciences, University Hospital, Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham NG7 2UH, UK.

Malaria has had an enormous impact on human history, not least in times of war. The disease has been treatable by a natural remedy, quinine, since the 17th century, but the production of synthetic antimalarial agents was first achieved in Germany in the wake of the Great War of 1914–1918, in which malaria had caused immense problems. In the 1920s research workers in the Bayer laboratories of the IG Farbenindustrie consortium developed the 8-aminoquinoline plasmoquine (the forerunner of primaquine). They went on to develop the acridine dye, atebrin (mepacrine) and the 4-aminoquinolines, Resochin (developed at the end of the Second World War in America as chloroquine) and Sontochin. British attempts to match the advances achieved by the Germans were at first unproductive, partly because collaboration between academic and industrial organizations in the UK was beset by concerns over patent rights. However, with the outbreak of World War II, when supplies of antimalarials were scarce, ICI succeeded in the large-scale production of mepacrine (essential to prosecution of the war, particularly in the Far East) and also initiated a programme of collaborative research that eventually led to the discovery of proguanil (Paludrine); this, in its turn led to the diaminopyrimidine, pyrimethamine. A massive cooperative screening programme in the USA during World War II eventually bore fruit in the realization of the therapeutic potential of chloroquine, and in the later development of amodiaquine and primaquine. Some of this work also influenced the subsequent discovery of mefloquine and halofantrine at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 J Antimicrob ChemotherHome page
A. Nzila
The past, present and future of antifolates in the treatment of Plasmodium falciparum infection
J. Antimicrob. Chemother., June 1, 2006; 57(6): 1043 - 1054.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Home page
 J Antimicrob ChemotherHome page
M. Wainwright
Acridine--a neglected antibacterial chromophore
J. Antimicrob. Chemother., January 1, 2001; 47(1): 1 - 13.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.