¡We should be grateful! - Health Communications Ltd - Marketing Farmacéutico Agencia Creativa

¿Bull or Frog?
We must be grateful!

Millions of patients around the world
owe enormous gratitude to a frog

August 14 2024

The modern history of gastroenterology could be based on three great discoveries. Today we will only mention one of them: the protom pump.

In 1973, Gansejl and Forte described the proton pump, or H+K+adenosine triphosphatase (ATPase), in the Bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus). They showed that this pump regulates the secretion of hydrochloric acid in the parietal cells of the gastric mucosa.

Two years later, in 1975, the experimental development of Proton Pump Inhibitors (PPIs) began. Two companies, the Japanese Takeda® and the French Servier®, independently worked on different compounds. The researchers were independent and apparently did not know each other. However, both groups concluded that these compounds were highly toxic in animals.

In 1979, the Swedish company Aktiebolaget Hässle®, dedicated itself to the search for compounds with less toxicity, thus achieving the synthesis of timoprazole, which had the antisecretory profile of its predecessors, but without their toxicity. However, adverse effects such as thyroid volume increase were attributed to it, so it was not marketed. Later, it evolved into picoprazole and eventually, omeprazole emerged.

The first reports of omeprazole’s efficacy were published in 1983, after 2 years of testing in humans. However, due to the association during that time with carcinogenesis in rats, research was stopped.

The non-neoplastic causality was later demonstrated. In 1987, the company AstraZeneca® developed and patented a stable formulation of omeprazole. In 1988, the company began marketing this drug under the name Losec®. Losec is an acronym for Low Secretion.

Lansoprazole (1995), rabeprazole (1999), pantoprazole (2000), esomeprazole (2001) and dexlansoprazole (2009) followed.

¡Thank you, Bullfrog! We must be grateful!