Biomedical Research

In the 1970s, microbiologist Satoshi Ōmura at Japan's Kitasato Institute isolated a soil bacterium that produced compounds effective against parasitic worms. Working under a partnership with Merck, parasitologist William C. Campbell's team refined these compounds into ivermectin, a veterinary treatment approved in 1981 and later adapted into Mectizan, approved for human use in 1987 to treat river blindness. Merck committed to donating Mectizan indefinitely to combat the disease, and Ōmura and Campbell shared the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery.

University of Wisconsin-Madison biochemist Karl Paul Link and his lab isolated an anticoagulant compound from spoiled sweet clover hay in 1939, after a Wisconsin farmer's cattle began hemorrhaging from the moldy feed. Their research led to warfarin, marketed first as a rat poison in 1948 and later approved as the blood-thinning drug warfarin sodium (Coumadin) in 1954. It remains one of the world's most widely prescribed anticoagulants.

Trials of the new product were launched in the 1950s at Indiana University (IU), in Bloomington. There, a dentist instructed children to brush their teeth — in whichever way they normally did — with a new kind of paste. After six months, the kids came back for a checkup. These local children were not just dental patients, they were participants in one of the biggest clinical trials ever run on toothpaste. The main investigator in this endeavor was Dr. Joseph Muhler, a dentist and assistant professor in the university’s chemistry department.

The antihistamine Benadryl has provided temporary relief from allergy symptoms for millions of people since it was developed by George Rieveschl at a University of Cincinnati laboratory in the early 1940s and later approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Rieveschl was originally studying muscle relaxants when he discovered the compound diphenhydramine hydrochloride. He sold it under the name ‘Benadryl,’ among others.

For more than a century, scientists at Rockefeller University have enhanced our understanding of the molecular basis of life — specifically the relationship between the structure and function of nucleic acids and proteins. They showed that DNA transfers genetic information and that the sugars ribose and deoxyribose are the key building blocks of the nucleic acids RNA and DNA.