There are many thousands of us alive today thanks to the brilliant, pioneering work of James Whyte Black. Black was born in 1924 in Uddingston, Lanarkshire. His father was a mining engineer. Money was tight but he was persuaded to sit the St Andrews University entrance exam by his maths teacher and, at the age of 15, won a residential scholarship there where he studied medicine. He later joined the Physiology department at the University of St Andrews before taking a lecturer position at the University of Malaya. On his return to Scotland in 1950, he joined the University of Glasgow (Veterinary School) where he developed an interest in the way adrenaline affects the human heart, particularly in those suffering from angina. He worked for ICI Pharmaceuticals from 1958 until 1964, during which time he developed propranolol to treat high blood pressure and heart disease, hailed as the greatest breakthrough in the treatment of that killer disease since the discovery of digitalis. Commonly known as beta blockers, they became at one time the world's best-selling drug, slowing down the heart rate to treat and prevent heart attacks and angina pectoris and reduce high blood pressure. During this time Black pioneered a method of research whereby drug molecules were purposefully built instead of being synthesised first and then investigated for their potential medical uses. He was a thus a pioneer of intelligent drug design, now the foundation of the development of most new developments in the world-wide pharmaceutical industry.
At the same time, Black was developing a similar method of treatment for stomach ulcers, but ICI did not wish to pursue the idea so Black resigned and joined Smith, Kline and French for whom he worked for nine years. While there, Black developed his second major drug, cimetidine which was launched under the brand name Tagamet in 1975. (That's the moleclar structure of the drug in the graphic). It outsold even his propranolol beta blocker to become the world's largest-selling prescription drug in 1988 and was the first prescription drug to sell over a billion dollars-worth. Zantac followed, using similar principles. Prior to these drugs surgery was the most common way to deal with stomach ulcers but this was often unsuccessful.
In 1984 Black then became Professor of Analytical Pharmacology at the Rayne Institute of the King's College London medical school, where he remained until 1992. He established the James Black Foundation in 1988 with funding from Johnson and Johnson and led a team of 25 scientists in drugs research, including gastrin inhibitors which may prevent some stomach cancers.
Black contributed to basic scientific and clinical knowledge in cardiology, both as a physician and as a basic scientist. His invention of propranolol (pictured on the right) revolutionised the medical management of angina pectoris and is considered to be one of the most important contributions to clinical medicine and pharmacology of the 20th century. Propranolol has been described as the greatest breakthrough in heart disease treatments since the 18th century discovery of digitalis and has benefited millions of people. It is estimated that medicines developed along the methodologies established by Black represent 20% of the $825 billion annual turnover of the world's top-selling drugs. The success of beta blockers was a major contributor to reducing the mortality rate from heart disease in the last few decades. In the UK alone 255 of every 100,000 men died from coronary heart disease in 1978. By 2007 that figure had plummeted to 65 per 100,000. They have prolonged the lives of millions of people and improved the quality of their lives as well.
Black was knighted in 1981 for services to medical research and in 2000 he was appointed by the Queen to the Order of Merit, of which there are only 24 members at any one time. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1976 and in 2004 was awarded the society's Royal Medal. He was awarded the 1988 Nobel Prize in Medicine along with Gertrude B. Elion and George H. Hitchings for their work on drug development. Black was such a very private man who was averse to publicity that he was horrified to discover he had won the Nobel Prize! He later remarked dryly that when he was told he had won the Nobel Prize he had commented "I wish I had had my beta blockers handy to slow down my heart rate!"
Following his death in March 2010 after a long illness, he was described by The Daily Telegraph as the man who earned the most for the pharmaceutical industry through his drug development (though he received little personal financial gain from his work). In the days following the announcement of his death, researchers revealed that beta blockers had been found to be a potential treatment for breast cancer, following trials which showed that the drug produced significant falls in both cancer spread and local recurrence.
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