Medicinal Chemistry in the Golden Age of Biology: Lessons from Steroid and Peptide Research

Abstract Collaboration between biologists and chemists has generated medicines of enormous benefit to society. The dynamics of this synergistic interaction combines two strengths: the rigor of chemistry and the ability of biologists to construct unifying concepts from diverse fields of investigation. The resulting contributions to the practice of medicine have reduced morbidity and mortality while increasing the quality of life. Building on the work of chemists such as Robinson , Prelog , Woodward , and Pauling , medicinal chemists have advanced rational drug discovery, especially of enzyme inhibitors, to a degree unthinkable even twenty years ago. Some of the major contributions of medicinal chemistry to human and animal health stem directly from the creative application of structural and electronic reasoning, from advances in instrumentation, and from spectacular progress in biology. However, medicinal chemists have only begun to scratch the surface of the opportunities made possible by the impact of the “double‐helix revolution” of the 1950s.