Pharmaceutical industry origins

Chemical synthesis remains as important to society as it became during World War II, when the modem pharmaceutical industry originated in its efforts to develop penicillins. Ever since, organic chemists literally have made the drugs that relieve our illnesses. Further examples include the antiinflammatory cortisone, developed in the 1940s to treat arthritis, and the protease inhibitors indinavir, ritonavir, and saquyinavir, introduced in 1995 to suppress the human immunodeficiency virus (HfV). 

The pharmaceutical industry has employed materials of plant and animal origin as sources of drugs. The industry has utilized the life processes of either plants or animals and microorganisms to produce medicinal and antibiotic products. 

Bioprocess plants are an essential part of food, fine chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Use of microorganisms to transform biological materials for production of fermented foods, cheese and chemicals has its antiquity. Bioprocesses have been developed for an enoimous range of commercial products, as listed in Table 1.1. Most of the products originate from relatively cheap raw materials. Production of industrial alcohols and organic solvents is mostly originated from cheap feed stocks. The more expensive and special bioprocesses are in the production of antibiotics, monoclonal antibodies and vaccines. Industrial enzymes and living cells such as baker s yeast and brewer s yeast are also commercial products obtained from bioprocess plants. 

Chirality at surfaces can be manifested in a number of forms including the intrinsic chirality of the surface structure and even the induction of chirality via the adsorption of achiral molecules onto achiral surfaces. The ability of STM to probe surfaces on a local scale with atomic/molecular resolution has revolutionized the understanding of these phenomena. Surfaces that are globally chiral either due to their intrinsic structure or due to the adsorption of chiral molecules have been shown by STM to establish control over the adsorption behavior of prochiral species. This could have profound consequences for the understanding of the origin of homochirality in life on Earth and in the development of new generations of heterogeneous chiral catalysts that may, finally, make a substantial impact on the pharmaceutical industry. 

Table 1 Some of the most important emerging pollutants divided into chemicals with an industrial origin and pharmaceuticals...

An important number of these substances have an industrial origin. Some of them, like the pesticides, arrive intentionally in the environment and their use and release should be theoretically controlled. However, many of them have not been purposely produced as bioactive substances but more as components or additives of certain materials. Their significant growth in the chemical industry has not only been produced as a consequence of the discovery of new active principles in the pharmaceutical or pesticide area, but also because of the expansion of new technologies (electronics, containers, textiles, plastics, resins, foams, etc.), that require the development of new materials and substances with particular features. Most of these substances enter or are discharged to water and air sources without regulated controls. Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are often not yet adapted to completely remove them, and therefore these new compounds can be found to some extent in wastewater effluents as well as in soil and sludge. 

With respect to mice, the CD-I is by far the most commonly used strain in the pharmaceutical industry. Other strains used less frequently are the B6C3F1, CF-1, NMRI, C57B1, Balb/c, and Swiss (PMA, 1988 Rao et al., 1988). Swiss is the generic term since most currently used inbred and outbred strains were originally derived from the Swiss mouse. 

Nitrogen mustard agents were introduced before the development of nerve agents. Nitrogen mustard agent HN-1 was developed by accident by the German and Czech pharmaceutical industries. It was originally developed to remove warts and kill... 

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