Discovering New Drugs
- Traditionally, drugs were extracted from plants and microorganisms
- New drugs are being developed all the time by scientists at universities and drug companies around the world
- Lots of the medications that we use today are based on chemicals extracted from plants
- The heart drug digitalis originates from foxgloves
- The painkiller aspirin originates from willow
- Penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming from the Penicillium mould
- Most new drugs are synthesised by chemists in the pharmaceutical industry. However, the starting point may still be a chemical extracted from a plant
Drugs From Plants Table
- Penicillin was first discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928
- He left some Petri dishes that had been contaminated with mould and found that bacteria would not grow near the mould
- He discovered that the mould (Penicillium notatum) was releasing a chemical (penicillin) that killed the bacteria surrounding it
- New drugs are now developed by the pharmaceutical industry. Many of these still have plants as their source