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James Black - Winning the battle of histamine antagonists (16/33)

379 views · Published 28 June 2017 · 1:09 · Indexed 20 October 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · Science & Technology

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To hear more of James Black’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T40sQxRoDwA&list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxj8rsp51ptesTyqLBftzPD

The late Scottish pharmacologist Sir James W Black (1924-2010) revolutionised medical treatment of hypertension and angina with his invention of propranolol, the first ever beta blocker. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1998. [Listener: William Duncan; story recorded: 2006]

TRANSCRIPT: This was... one of the early compounds we found which would inhibit acid secretion was histidine. Now histidine is the amino acid and it seemed a very unlikely candidate for an inhibitor. But, anyway, I remember our Research Director got very excited about this... this... and it was alpha-methylhistidine, wasn't it. I think it was. He got very excited about this and maybe... and he wanted to do more, but I said, 'Look, it's not an histamine antagonist, and I'm trying to find a histamine antagonist, not an inhibitor of acid secretion'. And so we had quite a spat on that. But, anyway, we then found out that a... a salt that's often used to extract amino acids is a thing called dichlorobenzene sulfonate and we showed that, in fact, this salt on its own would do the business. So, then he wanted to go for dichlorobenzene sulfonate and... that was one of the minor battles which we won.

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