Word: merck
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Cortisone is made, in 37 chemical steps over a six-month period, from the bile of slaughtered oxen (40 head are required for a single daily dose). Merck & Co., who make it, produce only about 1½ ounces a week. Acutely conscious of the desperate demand, research chemists have been plugging away at the problem, trying to speed the process and eventually mass-produce the drug...
...first announced the cortisone treatment, said of the report: "Interesting, but I don't think that is the answer." In the "four or five years" before enough seeds could be grown, he said, "we expect to have cortisone available in much larger supply from other sources." In the Merck laboratories, the Strophanthus product, sarmentogenin (first isolated in 1915), had already been carefully considered. The synthesis of cortisone from sarmentogenin, a spokesman said, would be "an extremely difficult matter." Its chemical structure is similar to the 17th intermediary product in the current process, he admitted, but that similarity...
Cortisone is even scarcer than ACTH. Merck & Co., who make it, in 37 tedious steps, from the bile of butchered cattle, expect to produce little more than 1½ ounces a week for the rest of the year. Last week it was announced that henceforth cortisone will be doled out to suitable hospitals and research institutions through a committee of the National Academy of Sciences. And Merck has stopped giving it away: the price now is $60 for a 300-milligram vial ($5,670 an ounce...
Back from Germany in 1942 with doctorates in natural science and chemistry, Serrano taught at Guatemala City's San Carlos University and spent his spare time studying ixbut. Last week he had finished a 14-month series of experiments (in which Guatemala physicians cooperated) under contract for Merck & Co., and was busy writing his report...
...convinced," concludes Serrano, "that ixbut increases milk flow. By analysis, I know that this increment is actually milk and not water, as I originally suspected. We must still isolate the agent that causes the increase [a project which Merck & Co. will work on] and learn how it works." Serrano could rule out the milk-producing hormone prolactin: it did not enable his wife to nurse her four babies. But ixbut...