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Personal reflections on Sir James Black (1924–2010) and histamine

  • History of inflammation
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Abstract

Sir James Black, Nobel laureate (1988), became interested in the role of histamine in gastric acid secretion in the early 1950s. In 1964, he joined the pharmaceutical company Smith Kline and French Laboratories at their English subsidiary to seek a new type of antagonist that would block those actions of histamine that were not blocked by mepyramine. No such compound was known and working with medicinal chemists it took four years to discover a lead compound. Further work provided the compound burimamide, which was used to define histamine H2 receptors in 1972 for the first time, and to verify the action in human volunteers. Subsequent work led to the drug metiamide, which was withdrawn during early clinical trials. This was replaced by cimetidine, which was launched in 1977, as the first histamine H2-receptor antagonist and which revolutionized the treatment of peptic ulcer disease. The characterisation of a second type of histamine receptor revitalised interest in histamine and led to many later studies on the role of histamine in inflammation.

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Notes

  1. Michael Edward Parsons, 1939–2010, studied pharmacy in London and joined SK&F in 1963 where he did his PhD research in pharmacology under the direction of James Black. He was appointed Head of Pharmacology 1 in 1975. He left SmithKline Beecham in 1993 to become SmithKline Beecham Research Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Hertfordshire, UK.

  2. Graham John Durant, 1934–2009, studied chemistry and obtained his PhD at the University of Birmingham, UK. After a year at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, USA, he joined SK&F in 1960 as a medicinal chemist and first worked on the synthesis of novel guanidine derivatives for testing as antihypertensive agents. He became Head of Medicinal Chemistry 1 in 1975. He left SK&F in 1987 to establish the Center for Drug Design and Development at the University of Toledo, Ohio, USA where he became Distinguished Professor of Medicinal Chemistry. In 1992 he moved again to become Senior Director of Chemistry at Cambridge Neuroscience Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, until he retired in 1999.

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  1. Department of Chemistry, University College London, Christopher Ingold Laboratories, 20 Gordon Street, London, WC1H 0AJ, UK

    C. Robin Ganellin

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  1. C. Robin Ganellin
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Correspondence to C. Robin Ganellin.

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Ganellin, C.R. Personal reflections on Sir James Black (1924–2010) and histamine. Inflamm. Res. 60, 103–110 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00011-010-0269-2

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