Short History of the Drug Receptor Concept

CAY-RÜDIGER PRÜLL is Senior Lecturer in the History of Medicine at the University of Freiburg, Germany. Currently he is supervising projects on the history of pharmacology and on the history of German military medicine between 1914 and 1945. Between 2000 and 2003 he was Senior Research Associate at the University of Durham, UK, working on a project on the impact of the receptor concept on modern pharmacology, which was sponsored by the Wellcome Trust. He has published extensively on the history of medicine, pharmacology and pathology including Traditions in Pathology in Western Europe Theories, Institutions and their Cultural Setting. ANDREAS-HOLGER MAEHLE is Professor of the History of Medicine and Medical Ethics at Durham University, UK, where he directs the Centre for the History of Medicine and Disease. He previously held a lectureship at the University of Göttingen, Germany, and was a research fellow at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London. He has published widely on the history of medicine and pharmacology, including Drugs on Trial: Experimental Pharmacology and Therapeutic Innovation in the Eighteenth Century. ROBERT F. HALLIWELL is Professor of Neuropharmacology at the Thomas J Long School of Pharmacy, University of the Pacific, in California. He previously held a lectureship in neuroscience at the University of Durham, UK and a research fellowship at the University of California, Irvine. His workfocuses on the pharmacological properties of nerve cell receptors and ion channels.

• Introduction Paul Ehrlich and his Receptor Concept The Development of the Concept of Drug Receptors in the Physiological Research of J. N. Langley The Receptors and Scientific Pharmacology I: The Critics of the Receptor Idea and Alternative Theories of Drug Action, c. 1905-1935 The Receptors and Scientific Pharmacology II: The Critics of the Receptor Idea and Alternative Research Strands: The Transmitter Theory, c. 1905-1935 Quantitative Arguments for the Existence of Drug Receptors and the Development of the Receptor Occupancy Theory, c. 1910-1960 The Dual Adrenaline Receptor Theory of Raymond P. Ahlquist (1914-1983) and its Application in Drug Development between 1950 and 1970 The Emergence of Molecular Pharmacology Conclusions Archival Sources Bibliography