- Person
- Paul Ehrlich
- Lived
- 1854–1915
- Field
- Immunology & chemotherapy
- From
- German
The story
Paul Ehrlich was born in 1854 in Strehlen, Silesia, the son of Ismar Ehrlich, an innkeeper and distiller who led the local Jewish community. Trained as a physician, he became fascinated by the way certain dyes stained some cells and tissues but not others.
That observation led him to a bold idea. If a chemical could bind selectively to a germ, it might kill the germ while leaving the patient unharmed. He imagined drugs that would seek out disease-causing organisms the way antitoxins seek out their toxins, and called such an ideal drug a magic bullet. Meanwhile his work on immunity, including a decisive contribution to the diphtheria antiserum and a method for standardising therapeutic serums, earned him the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, shared with Élie Metchnikoff.
In Frankfurt, where from 1906 he also directed the Georg Speyer House, a research foundation endowed by Franziska Speyer, Ehrlich and his team built on the arsenic drug atoxyl. With the chemist Alfred Bertheim he worked out its correct structure, opening the way to hundreds of new arsenic compounds. Compound 606, arsphenamine, was first made in Bertheim's hands in 1907 but set aside as ineffective. In 1909 Sahachiro Hata, a Japanese researcher who had learned to infect rabbits with syphilis, tested the discarded compound and found that it worked. In human trials the spirochetes disappeared in seven syphilis patients.
After extensive clinical testing, Hoechst began marketing the drug as Salvarsan towards the end of 1910. It was the first modern antimicrobial drug, the first effective treatment for syphilis and the first agent with a specific therapeutic effect created from theoretical reasoning. It became the most widely prescribed drug in the world and remained the best treatment for syphilis until penicillin arrived in the 1940s. In the process Ehrlich launched and named the concept of chemotherapy.
His methods outlived his drug. The systematic screening of large numbers of compounds became standard practice in the pharmaceutical industry, and modern antibody-drug conjugates, which deliver cancer drugs to chosen cells, have partly realised the magic bullet he imagined.
Why it matters
Ehrlich's search for targeted drugs began modern pharmacology, paving the way for antibiotics and the cancer chemotherapy that saves lives today.
About Paul Ehrlich
Nobel-winning German Jewish physician who imagined the “magic bullet”, founded chemotherapy and, with Salvarsan in 1909, produced the first effective drug against syphilis.
More about Paul Ehrlich
- Paul Ehrlich named and characterised the mast cellWhile still a young scientist, Paul Ehrlich named and characterised the mast cell, the immune cell now known to drive allergic reactions.
- Paul Ehrlich's maxim is the first rule of drug designPaul Ehrlich summed up a basic law of pharmacology in four Latin words, corpora non agunt nisi fixata: a drug acts only when it is bound to its target.
- Paul Ehrlich's dyes revealed the blood-brain barrierPaul Ehrlich noticed that dyes injected into the bloodstream coloured nearly every organ except the brain, an early clue to the blood-brain barrier that protects our nervous system.
- Paul Ehrlich's dyes founded modern haematologyUsing the new synthetic dyes of the 1870s and 1880s, Paul Ehrlich learned to tell the different kinds of white blood cells apart, laying the foundations of modern blood science.
- Paul Ehrlich improved the tuberculosis test overnightThe day after Robert Koch announced the tuberculosis bacterium in March 1882, Paul Ehrlich improved Koch's method of staining it, making the deadly germ far easier to detect.
- Paul Ehrlich treated malaria with a synthetic dyeNoticing that malaria parasites soak up methylene blue, Paul Ehrlich tried the dye as a treatment, and two patients' fevers subsided, an early step toward designed synthetic drugs.
- Paul Ehrlich foresaw antibodies and receptorsPaul Ehrlich's side-chain theory proposed that cells carry receptors that bind specific toxins, an idea about antibodies that helped earn him the 1908 Nobel Prize.
- Paul Ehrlich made diphtheria antitoxin reliableWorking with Emil von Behring in the 1890s, Paul Ehrlich devised ways to measure the strength of diphtheria antitoxin, so doctors could give children safe, reliable doses.
- Paul Ehrlich’s trypan red opened the attack on trypanosomesScreening over 100 dyes in Frankfurt, Paul Ehrlich’s team found trypan red, which killed trypanosomes in infected animals, an early chemotherapy victory that led to arsenic drugs.
Sources
- Paul Ehrlich Wikipedia
- Paul Ehrlich: Biographical Nobel Prize
- Arsphenamine Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.