Atracurium

History

Atracurium besilate was first made in 1974 by George H. Dewar, a pharmacist and a medicinal chemistry doctoral candidate in John B. Stenlake's medicinal chemistry research group in the Department of Pharmacy at Strathclyde University, Scotland. Dewar first named this compound "33A74" before its eventual emergence in the clinic as atracurium. Atracurium was the culmination of a rational approach to drug design to produce the first non-depolarizing non-steroidal skeletalmuscle relaxant that undergoes chemodegradation in vivo. The term chemodegradation was coined by Roger D. Waigh, Ph.D., also a pharmacist and a postdoctoral researcher in Stenlake's research group. Atracurium was licensed by Strathclyde University to the Wellcome Foundation UK, which developed the drug (then known as BW 33A) and its introduction to first human trials in 1979, and then eventually to its first introduction (as a mixture of all ten stereoisomers) into clinical anesthetic practice in the UK, in 1983, under the tradename of Tracrium.