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Arsphenamine, also known as Salvarsan and 606, is a drug
Medication

A pharmaceutical drug, also referred to as medicine or medicament, can be loosely defined as any substance intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease....
 that was used to treat syphilis
Syphilis

Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The route of transmission of syphilis is almost always through sexual contact, although there are examples of congenital syphilis via transmission from mother to child in utero....
 and trypanosomiasis
Sleeping sickness

Sleeping sickness or human African trypanosomiasis is a parasitic disease of people and animals, caused by protozoa of species Trypanosoma brucei and transmitted by the tsetse fly....
. It was the first modern chemotherapeutic agent
Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy, in its most general sense, refers to treatment of disease by chemicals that kill cells, specifically those of micro-organisms or cancer....
.

lass="link1" onMouseover='showByLink("m408857",this)' onMouseout='hide("m408857")'href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Sahachiro_Hata">Sahachiro Hata
Sahachiro Hata

; was a Japan bacteriologist who developed the Arsphenamine drug in 1909 in the laboratory of Paul Ehrlich.Hata was born in Shimane Prefecture, and completed his medical education in Kyoto....
 discovered the anti-syphilitic
Syphilis

Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The route of transmission of syphilis is almost always through sexual contact, although there are examples of congenital syphilis via transmission from mother to child in utero....
 activity of this compound in 1908 in the laboratory of Paul Ehrlich
Paul Ehrlich

Paul Ehrlich was a German scientist in the fields of hematology, immunology, and chemotherapy, and Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He is noted for his research in autoimmunity, calling it "horror autotoxicus"....
, during a survey of hundreds of newly synthesized organic arsenical compounds.






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Salvarsan Montage
Arsphenamine, also known as Salvarsan and 606, is a drug
Medication

A pharmaceutical drug, also referred to as medicine or medicament, can be loosely defined as any substance intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease....
 that was used to treat syphilis
Syphilis

Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The route of transmission of syphilis is almost always through sexual contact, although there are examples of congenital syphilis via transmission from mother to child in utero....
 and trypanosomiasis
Sleeping sickness

Sleeping sickness or human African trypanosomiasis is a parasitic disease of people and animals, caused by protozoa of species Trypanosoma brucei and transmitted by the tsetse fly....
. It was the first modern chemotherapeutic agent
Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy, in its most general sense, refers to treatment of disease by chemicals that kill cells, specifically those of micro-organisms or cancer....
.

History

Sahachiro Hata
Sahachiro Hata

; was a Japan bacteriologist who developed the Arsphenamine drug in 1909 in the laboratory of Paul Ehrlich.Hata was born in Shimane Prefecture, and completed his medical education in Kyoto....
 discovered the anti-syphilitic
Syphilis

Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The route of transmission of syphilis is almost always through sexual contact, although there are examples of congenital syphilis via transmission from mother to child in utero....
 activity of this compound in 1908 in the laboratory of Paul Ehrlich
Paul Ehrlich

Paul Ehrlich was a German scientist in the fields of hematology, immunology, and chemotherapy, and Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He is noted for his research in autoimmunity, calling it "horror autotoxicus"....
, during a survey of hundreds of newly synthesized organic arsenical compounds. Ehrlich had theorized that by screening many compounds a drug could be discovered with anti-microbial activity. Ehrlich's team began their search for such a "magic bullet" among chemical derivatives of the dangerously toxic drug atoxyl
Atoxyl

Arsanilic acid is the organoarsenic compound also called p-aminophenylarsenic acid. This colourless solid was used as a drug in the late 19th and early 20th centuries but is now considered prohibitively toxic....
. This was the first organized team effort to optimize the biological activity of a lead compound
Lead compound

A lead compound in drug discovery is a chemical compound that has pharmacology or biological activity and whose chemical structure is used as a starting point for chemistry modifications in order to improve potency, selectivity, or pharmacokinetic parameters....
 through systematic chemical modifications, the basis for nearly all modern pharmaceutical research.

Arsphenamine was marketed under the trade name
Trade name

A trade name, also known as a trading name or a business name, is the name which a business trades under for commercial purposes, although its registered, Legal name , used for contracts and other formal situations, may be another....
 Salvarsan in 1910. It was also called 606, because it was the 606th compound synthesized for testing. Salvarsan was the first organic anti-syphillitic
Syphilis

Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The route of transmission of syphilis is almost always through sexual contact, although there are examples of congenital syphilis via transmission from mother to child in utero....
, and a great improvement over the inorganic mercury
Mercury (element)

Mercury , also called quicksilver or hydrargyrum , is a chemical element with the symbol Hg and atomic number 80. A heavy, silvery d-block metal, mercury is one of six elements that are liquid at or near room temperature and pressure....
 compounds that had been used previously. A more soluble (but slightly less effective) arsenic
Arsenic

Arsenic is a well-known chemical element that has the symbol As and atomic number 33. Arsenic was first documented by Albertus Magnus in 1250....
al compound, Neosalvarsan
Neosalvarsan

Neosalvarsan is a synthetic chemotherapeutic that is an organoarsenic compound. It became available in 1912 and superseded the more toxic and less water-soluble salvarsan as an effective treatment for syphilis....
, (neoarsphenamine), became available in 1912. These arsenic
Arsenic

Arsenic is a well-known chemical element that has the symbol As and atomic number 33. Arsenic was first documented by Albertus Magnus in 1250....
al compounds came with considerable risk of side effects, and they were supplanted as treatments for syphilis
Syphilis

Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The route of transmission of syphilis is almost always through sexual contact, although there are examples of congenital syphilis via transmission from mother to child in utero....
 in the 1940s by penicillin
Penicillin

Penicillin is a group of antibiotics derived from Penicillium fungi. They are Beta-lactam antibiotics used in the treatment of bacterial infections caused by susceptible, usually Gram-positive, organisms....
.

The bacterium that causes syphilis is a spirochete, Treponema pallidum
Treponema pallidum

Treponema pallidum is a gram-negative spirochaete bacterium....
. Arsphenamine is not toxic to spirochetes until it has been converted to an active form by the body.

After leaving Erlich's laboratory, Hata continued parallel investigation of the new medicine in Japan.

Structure

Since salvarsan's discovery until recently it was believed that the structure featured an As=As bond. However, in 2005, an extensive mass spectral analysis showed that the actual structure is most likely to be a mixture of the cyclic
Cyclic compound

In organic chemistry, a cyclic compound is a chemical compound in which a series of carbon atoms are connected to form a loop or ring. Benzene is a well known example....
 trimer
Trimer

Trimer might refer to:* trimer , a reaction product composed of three identical molecules* trimer , a compound of three macromolecules non-covalently bound...
 and a pentamer. The revised structure features As-As single bonds, not double bonds.

In history


Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin , born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov and also known by the pseudonyms V.I. Lenin and N. Lenin, was a Russians revolutionary, a Bolshevik Communism politician, the principal leader of the October Revolution and the first head of the USSR....
 was treated by salvarsan before his death, which supports the hypothesis that he died from syphilis.

See also

  • Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet
    The Magic Bullet

    Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet is a 1940 in film biographical film directed by William Dieterle and starring Edward G. Robinson, based on the true story of the Germany doctor and scientist Dr....
    , a 1940 movie released by Warner Brothers starring Edward G. Robinson
    Edward G. Robinson

    Edward Goldenberg Robinson, Sr. was an honorary Academy Award-winning United States actor born in Romania. Although he has played a wide range of characters, he is best remembered for his roles as a gangster, most notably in his star-making film Little Caesar....
     as Ehrlich.
  • Out of Africa
    Out of Africa

    Out of Africa is a 1985 filmbased loosely on Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen published in 1937, as well as Dinesen's Shadows on the Grass and other sources....
    ,     1937 novel and basis for a 1985 movie.