Social benefits of a successful biomedical research company: Merck.

HE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY has as its objective the discovery of important new medicines and vaccines to prevent and alleviate diseases and to improve health and the quality of life. Merck has been doing that successfully since 1933, when George W. Merck opened the first laboratory in Rahway, New Jersey. Through the efforts of its research scientists, the company has contributed drugs and vaccines in numerous therapeutic areas. In 1975, Bill Campbell and his research team discovered a medicine for control of animal parasites (worms) that ultimately gave Merck an opportunity few companies have ever had in history. Campbell’s research group was searching for a medicine that would kill worms in domestic animals—horses, cattle, sheep, and pigs. To discover such a medicine, they utilized a very simple system: they put worms into the abdomen of a mouse, then fed the mouse cultures of soil microorganisms that had been collected around the world. Soil microorganisms make many interesting substances—including many antibiotics. Bill believed he might find a microorganism that would make a substance that would kill worms. The Campbell team screened soil samples sent from many parts of the world—a total of about forty thousand samples. Only one gave a very interesting response—it killed all the worms implanted in the mouse, and it did this even when the culture broth was enormously diluted, indicating that the active substance in the broth was extremely potent. The substance was isolated, identified, slightly altered chemically to improve its safety, and then tested widely for its effect on many different parasites in the Merck Research Laboratories. The unique soil microorganism came from the laboratory of Dr. Satoshi Omura of the Kitasato Institute of Japan. This exciting new drug, called Ivermectin, was tested against all the economically important parasites that plague the business of farmers