War-time pharmaceutical chemistry

Particularly during the Second World War the combination of external threat, initiative by scientists and industrialists and, importantly, national coordination by the Defence Department's Medical Equipment Control Committee (MECC) and the Drug Committee of the Australian Association of Scientific Workers produced a remarkable flow of new manufactures and biological agents. While few of these developments were basic inventions, most of them occurred with little access to international know-how; most involved original innovations and step changes in volume and level of technological sophistication. They also reflected the emergence of second and third generation local technologists. Again it was remarkable how strong the influence of pharmaceutical chemistry was on developments in chemistry.[60]

Glucose, a pharmaceutical product in its own right and the precursor for Vitamin C (ascorbic acid), was produced at the beginning of the Second World War by W. Hoadley in Melbourne, and later by Hoadley's successors, Glaxo Pty. Ltd. Under Dr. (later Professor) V. M. Trikojus of Sydney University, and on the basis of earlier US work and imported bacteria, B. Cortis-Jones developed a synthesis of Vitamin C from glucose including a catalytic hydrogenation step and a fermentation process. In 1943 he joined CSR to transfer the process to large scale manufacture. CSR were able to meet the military demand and its subsidiary CSR-Chemicals Ltd. maintained manufacture until 1961. Supply of another Vitamin -A -was sought by the army and the UK. Before the war CSIRO had demonstrated that oil derived from local sharks was rich in Vitamin A. Nicholas' and Faulding's developed processes for the production of the material from sharks' livers and supplied the entire demand of the Australian army, the civilian population and a substantial export trade to the UK and India.

A major discovery, sulpha drugs, by I. G. Farben's F. Mietsch, J. Klarer (1930) and G. Domagk (1935, prontosil) had been established as spectacular bacteriostats and even bactericides in some applications by E. Forneau (Pasteur Institute), Colebrook, Kenny and Buttle (1937), just before the war. By 1939-41 Monsanto-Southern Cross had already entered manufacture of some basic organic chemicals, phenol, salicylic acid, sodium salicylate, phenacetin and acetanilide at their Footscray site. The raw materials, caustic soda, carbon dioxide and aniline were available because basic manufacture of heavy chemicals by then was well established by ICI Australia, Australian Oxygen Company and Timbrol. Production of phenacetin early in 1944 in sufficient quantity to supply the army with APC tablets was another major contribution by Monsanto to the war effort. Monsanto's early entry into organic synthesis also was helpful when war broke out in the Pacific. Monsanto (by then a subsidiary of the Monsanto Group), with access to raw materials and international know-how, was in a position to respond rapidly to the army's request to expand into the manufacture of the first sulphadrug, sulfanilamide. Timbrol provided aniline; Commonwealth Fertilisers chlorsulphonic acid; ICI Australia ammonia and CSR ethyl alcohol. Within five months -months ahead of plan -the sulfanilamide plant was on line. Medical advances, however, were even faster.

Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering