The Drug Hunters: The Improbable Quest to Discover New Medicines

by Donald R. Kirsch, Ogi Ogas

Overview

The surprising, behind-the-scenes story of how our medicines are discovered, told by a veteran drug hunter.

The search to find medicines is as old as disease, which is to say as old as the human race. Through serendipity— by chewing, brewing, and snorting—some Neolithic souls discovered opium, alcohol, snakeroot, juniper, frankincense, and other helpful substances. Ötzi the Iceman, the five-thousand-year-old hunter frozen in the Italian Alps, was found to have whipworms in his intestines and Bronze-age medicine, a worm-killing birch fungus, knotted to his leggings. Nowadays, Big Pharma conglomerates spend billions of dollars on state-of the art laboratories staffed by PhDs to discover blockbuster drugs. Yet, despite our best efforts to engineer cures, luck, trial-and-error, risk, and ingenuity are still fundamental to medical discovery.

The Drug Hunters is a colorful, fact-filled narrative history of the search for new medicines from our Neolithic forebears to the professionals of today, and from quinine and aspirin to Viagra, Prozac, and Lipitor. The chapters offer a lively tour of how new drugs are actually found, the discovery strategies, the mistakes, and the rare successes. Dr. Donald R. Kirsch infuses the book with his own expertise and experiences from thirty-five years of drug hunting, whether searching for life-saving molecules in mudflats by Chesapeake Bay or as a chief science officer and research group leader at major pharmaceutical companies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781628727197
Publisher:	Arcade
Publication date:	12/13/2016
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	328
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Donald R. Kirsch, PhD, coauthor of The Drug Hunters, was a drug hunter for more than thirty-five years, holds more than two dozen drug-related patents, has written more than fifty research papers, and has been a reviewer for prestigious scientific journals. He served as a director of neuroscience research at Wyeth, the director of molecular genetic screen design at Cyanamid, the leader of a Research Group in Microbiology and Cell Biology at Squibb Institute for Medical Research, and the Chief Scientific Officer at Cambria Pharmaceuticals. He has taught in the biotechnology department at Harvard Extension School and currently teaches at Columbia University. He lives in Westchester, NY.

Ogi Ogas, PhD, is a professional science writer. He is the coauthor of A Billion Wicked Thoughts and Shrinks and has published articles in the Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Wired, Glamour, Seed, and Psychology Today. He lives in Boston, MA.

Editorial Reviews

10/31/2016
Kirsch, a veteran drug hunter, takes a lively and sweeping look at the history of drug discovery and how difficult, expensive, and pivotal the search has proven to be. It’s an enlightening, if ominous, survey. With the aid of science writer Ogas, Kirsch runs through a bevy of landmark drug finds, including the development of laudanum, an alcohol-based opium preparation, in the 16th century; the isolation of the active chemical in quinine in 1820; the synthesis of pain-blocking ether in 1846; the 1899 creation of the compound aspirin; the 1910 discovery of arsphenamine, a treatment for syphilis; the making of penicillin, the first broad-spectrum antibiotic, in 1940; and the research that led to an oral contraceptive pill in the 1950s. “The soaring cost of developing new drugs creates financial disincentives that prevent pharma companies from focusing on drugs that produce cures,” Kirsch writes of today’s modern dilemma. Indeed, he notes, on average, getting a new pharmaceutical product approved by the FDA takes about 14 years and costs approximately $1.5 billion. Kirsch sidesteps wider problems in the healthcare industry to conclude that overcoming the obstacles to creating new pharmaceuticals will require granting scientists “creative control over the drug hunting process.” (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"A must-read for a 'behind the scenes' look at new drug development.” —Madelyn Fernstrom, PhD, NBC News Health Editor

"An absolutely fascinating read that is especially remarkable for its adherence to factual detail in a history that reads with the smooth fluidity as a novel . . . Extraordinary, unique, and unreservedly recommended."—Midwest Book Review

"A well-written and highly informative book . . . Recommended for The ASCO Post readers, especially as a travel companion."—ASCO Post

“Kirsch, a veteran drug hunter, and Ogis, a talented science writer, expertly chronicle the search for lifesaving medications . . . A fascinating read full of surprising facts and intriguing connections."—Booklist

“This lucid, anecdote-rich book covers familiar ground for specialists but offers a bright overview for the rest of us of humankind's hunt for medicines . . . Kirsch tells the fascinating stories of historic drug discoveries over the centuries . . . Highly informative.” —Kirkus

“A lively and sweeping look at the history of drug discovery and how difficult, expensive, and pivotal the search has proven to be. It’s an enlightening, if ominous, survey.” —Publishers Weekly

"Dr. Kirsch brings a lifetime of experience to bear in separating common misconceptions about drug discovery from the reality, in which skill and luck combine to bring new medicines to the public."—Dr. Eric Gordon, Adjunct Professor, Stanford University, and CSO of Arixa Pharmaceuticals

"The Drug Hunters is an entertaining account of how new medicines are discovered. Fascinating stories and important lessons abound, and readers will be amazed and delighted to learn where and how some drugs with which they're familiar originated. Kirsch says that discovering a new drug is more like making a new movie than designing a new tablet, and I agree."—Dr. Richard B. Silverman, inventor of the Pfizer drug Lyrica

From the Publisher

2016-10-20
Biopharmaceutical consultant Kirsch debuts with a popular account of the search for new drugs, from prehistory through the rise of big pharma.This lucid, anecdote-rich book, co-authored by science writer Ogas (co-author: Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry, 2015, etc.), covers familiar ground for specialists but offers a bright overview for the rest of us of humankind's hunt for medicines, first in the molecules of plants, then in synthetic compounds, and now in the human genome. Throughout history, drug discoveries have been "entirely fortuitous," writes the author, who has been a chief science officer with several major drug firms. Successful drug hunting takes "talent, moxie, persistence, luck—and even then, it might not be enough." In fact, most researchers "never" find new compounds that safely and effectively improve health. That said, Kirsch tells the fascinating stories of historic drug discoveries over the centuries, from opium (used in 3400 B.C.E.) to chloroform, ether, quinine, aspirin, penicillin, insulin, the birth control pill, and psychoactive medicines. Once physician-botanists (until the Renaissance) and now physician-molecular biologists, drug researchers have always faced "dismayingly difficult" trial-and-error screening. Recounting the work of researchers from Valerius Cordus (b. 1515), who wrote a landmark apothecary manual, to Paul Ehrlich, who developed the cure for syphilis, to Gregory Pincus, a scandal-tainted scientist who worked with two elderly feminists to develop an effective oral contraception drug, Kirsch describes the emergence of the science of pharmacology by the mid-20th century. Today, 50 to 70 percent of all clinical drug trials fail, and each FDA-approved drug requires an average investment of $1.5 billion and 14 years of research. Kirsch notes that big pharma has little incentive to develop medicines that produce cures—as opposed to drugs for chronic diseases like diabetes and high cholesterol, which users purchase again and again—and faults drug makers' hostility to the "risk-laden reality of modern drug-hunting." Highly informative and accessible for general readers.

Kirkus Reviews