I have been reading the biography "Roger, The life and distinguished achievements of Dr. Roger Altounyan", who was a Syrian-born medic and pharmacologist who pioneered the use of
Sodium Cromoglycate ('Intal', FPL 670) as a prophylactic for the relief of astma attacks. He discovered the drug action by being a human guinea pig and inhaling guinea pig hairs in a 'soup' to induce his own asthma attacks (as an asthma sufferer) and noting over many years which plant extracts relieved his attacks 'when taken in advance' of an attack. By accident, as happens in these cases, one very active component of Khella, called 'Khellin', was very active and Fisons Pharma collaborated with him and thus FPL 670 was synthesised in 1965 and partially-trialled by 1968. I was very privileged to work on the synthesis of chromone analogues of FPL 670 at Fisons Pharmaceuticals at Holmes Chapel and Loughborough at that time, never actually met him, but saw him several times around on site at Holmes Chapel, Cheshire. There are many entries for him on the internet including
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Altounyan but perhaps the best are
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/breath/breath_exhibit/Cures/transforming/VAs8.html and
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/breath/media/ALTOUN1.MOV and
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/breath/media/ALTOUN2.MOV with short video clips of the man himself. As you may have read, in 1996 the Fisons Group dissolved with the Holmes Chapel manufacturing facility becoming Rhone-Poulenc Rorer then Aventis and now Sanofi-Aventis, and the R & D facility (where I was employed, initially at Holmes Chapel and later Loughborough, Leics) becoming Astra then later AstraZeneca and sadly it now is being closed in 2011 with the loss of 1200 posts. Like the UK pharmaceutical industry with losses in other organizations such as Pfizer notified through this year, it is a very sad loss and waste of resources. Such people as Roger are rare and it is rumoured that he was almost nominated for a Nobel prize for his work. A diagram of the cromoglycate molecule is shown as the logo for this blog 'Organic and Analytical Chemistry'.