Roundtable Discussion: Greatest Drug Molecules to Impact Society

Penicillin: The accidental discovery in 1928 of penicillin, an antibiotic drug, changed the history of medicine. Penicillin has become the most widely used antibiotic in the world. It is impossible to imagine what the world would be like without penicillin and the progress we made subsequently in the management of infectious diseases with the currently available antimicrobial drugs. This discovery of penicillin led to the synthesis of over 40+ drug molecules with varying antimicrobial activity against different types of pathogenic bacteria.

Trastuzumab: Trastuzumab, approved in 1998, derives from basic molecular biology and animal tumor virology focusing on receptor-mediated monoclonal antibody drug therapy. It is a humanized IgG1 kappa monoclonal antibody that selectively binds with high affinity to the extracellular domain of the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 protein, HER2. More than 250,000 U.S. women are diagnosed each year with invasive breast cancer, 20% of whom have tumors with HER2 mutations. Based on a published report in 2014, 85% of these women (with HER2) are expected to survive for at least 10 years with treatment with trastuzumab. In addition, the success of monoclonal antibody therapy has revolutionized the discovery programs within laboratory operations with more selective drug therapies, exemplified by more than 45 FDA-approved drug products based on monoclonal antibodies.