Ibuprofen who invented

Adams recruited Nicholson, a chemist, to help him test more than different compounds in hopes of finding one that could reduce inflammation and that most people could tolerate. They narrowed down the field to five drugs. The first four went into clinical trials and all failed. The fifth, though, proved to be successful. They received a U.

Three years later, it was approved as a prescription drug in England and soon became available around the world as an over-the-counter pain reliever. The professor emeritus at Sheffield Hallam University in England is considered a leading authority on ibuprofen. When it was published, someone approached the senior Adams and commented how the paper was authored by someone with the same last name.

The younger Adams says his father liked to joke he was the only person who lost money on the invention of ibuprofen. Even though the drug was patented by him and Nicholson, who died in , they received no royalties for its enormous success.

In fact, Adams paid the 1 pound filing fee for the patent but never submitted the receipt for reimbursement by Boots. So, as Smithsonian. After that, according to The Washington Post , the pharmaceutical company Adams worked for began promoting the drug as a general painkiller, and people started to stumble upon its use as a miracle hangover cure. Of course, I had to admit I did. BY Ellen Gutoskey.

But one of the compounds, phenylalkanoic acids, appeared to offer broader anti-inflammatory effects. Because of its anti-inflammatory properties, ibuprofen belongs to a class of drugs called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDS, such as acetaminophen and acetylsalicylic acid aspirin. Daily newsletter Receive essential international news every morning. The content you requested does not exist or is not available anymore. Listen to RFI. Although aspirin was commonly used as a painkiller at the time, it had to be given in very high doses so the risk of side-effects, such as an allergic reaction, bleeding and indigestion, was high.

This meant that by the s it was falling out of favour in the UK. In the search for an alternative, Dr Adams recruited chemist Dr John Nicholson and technician Colin Burrows to help him test the potency of more than chemical compounds.

The key was to find a drug that would be well tolerated. From the front room of an old Victorian house in the suburbs of Nottingham, the small team patiently tested and re-tested compounds until they found something worth trying on patients in the clinic. Dr Adams realised his chances of success were minimal but he and his staff persevered over 10 long years.

And he was always prepared to act as guinea pig, testing two or three compounds on himself. That would never be allowed now, he admits, but they were careful to carry out toxicity tests beforehand. During that time, four drugs went to clinical trials and failed before, in , they settled on one called 2- 4-isobutylphenyl propionic acid, later to become ibuprofen. A patent for ibuprofen was granted to Boots in and it was approved as a prescription drug seven years later.

According to Dave McMillan, former head of healthcare development at Boots UK, ibuprofen was an extremely important drug to the company. It was Boots' number one drug. An incredible 20, tonnes of ibuprofen are now made every year by a range of different companies under many different brand names.