Life saving drugs: the elusive magic bullet
John Mann
Cambridge: RSC 2004 | Pp256 | £24.95 | ISBN0 854 04634 8
Reviewed by Simon Cotton

Six years ago, John Mann wrote The elusive magic bullet: the search for the perfect drug. How does this book differ? Is this remake of 'Mann's medicines' comparable with Atkins' molecules? Not quite, but it's still an immensely valuable addition to the chemical literature. 

The book comprises an introduction, followed by three chapters concerned successively with antibacterials, antivirals, and anticancer drugs, with a final chapter on new approaches and prospects for the future. The text has been updated to cover advances of the past few years, and an improvement indispensable to chemists is the introduction of structural diagrams (why are these deemed unsuitable for 'popular' chemistry books?). 

Here you will find the roll call of 20th (and 21st) century medicines - sulphonamides, penicillin, streptomycin, cephalosporin, zanamivir, acyclovir, vinblastine, cisplatin, taxol and the anti-HIV drugs, to select a few. To the general public, these substances are little-remarked success stories of chemistry, taken for granted. But this book is not just concerned with the chemistry of these medicines; the drugs are put into the social context of the illnesses. Perhaps we all need to be reminded of the death rate caused by infectious diseases in the early 20th century, of how scourges such as TB and smallpox have been virtually eradicated (the former from many parts of the world, at least), and how life expectancy has shot upwards. The spread of HIV in the past two decades has been a halt on the road to improved human health, but in a surprisingly short time antivirals have come on the scene to increase the lifespan of AIDS patients (except in the parts of the world that cannot afford them, which is another issue). The author does not duck problems of drug resistance, for example to the ß-lactam antibiotics. 

The study of chemistry needs no further justification, but we need to shout louder. This book can be a real help in this, not least to teachers wanting to convince students of the value of a 'hard subject'. As Mann says, it is difficult to see how new drugs (and their lead compounds) can be optimised and synthesised by 'anyone other than highly skilled chemists'. This is an essential book for the library - both personal and departmental. Simon Cotton