Personal reflections on Sir James Black (1924-2010) and histamine

Sir James Black, Nobel laureate (1988), became interested in the role of histamine in gastric acid secretion in the early 1950s. In 1964, he joined the pharmaceutical company Smith Kline and French Laboratories at their English subsidiary to seek a new type of antagonist that would block those actions of histamine that were not blocked by mepyramine. No such compound was known and working with medicinal chemists it took four years to discover a lead compound. Further work provided the compound burimamide, which was used to define histamine H(2) receptors in 1972 for the first time, and to verify the action in human volunteers. Subsequent work led to the drug metiamide, which was withdrawn during early clinical trials. This was replaced by cimetidine, which was launched in 1977, as the first histamine H(2)-receptor antagonist and which revolutionized the treatment of peptic ulcer disease. The characterisation of a second type of histamine receptor revitalised interest in histamine and led to many later studies on the role of histamine in inflammation.