Setting the record straight: the origin of the pharmacophore concept

For over a century since the early 1900s, Paul Ehrlich was credited with originating the concept of pharmacophores. This was challenged by John Van Drie in 2007 due to the fact that Ehrlich did not use the word "pharmacophore" in his writings. Van Drie claimed that the attribution of the pharmacophore concept to Ehrlich was due to an erroneous citation made by Ariëns in a 1966 paper, and instead he claimed, Lemont B. Kier developed the pharmacophore concept (in the modern sense, as defined by the IUPAC) during 1967-1971. There are two separate issues that may have triggered this conflict. The first one is the shift in the meaning of pharmacophore from "chemical groups" to patterns of "abstract features" of a molecule that are responsible for a biological effect. Indeed, the original use of the term is different than the current definition proposed by the IUPAC. The term was redefined in 1960 by Schueler, and this modification formed the basis of IUPAC's modern definition. The second issue is the origin of the "concept" of pharmacophore. While Ehrlich's contemporaries have consistently attributed the origin of the concept to him, the issue is further complicated by the fact that Ehrlich did not use the term pharmacophore in his papers. He, instead, referred to the features of a molecule that are responsible for biological effects as toxophores, while his contemporaries were using the term pharmacophore for the same features. In this paper, we resolve any doubts about the origins of the pharmacophore concept. Our research points to Paul Ehrlich's 1898 paper for originating the concept, which identifies peripheral chemical groups in molecules responsible for binding that leads to the subsequent biological effect, and to Schueler's 1960 book that extends the concept to the modern definition where spatial patterns of abstract features of a molecule define the pharmacophore and are ultimately responsible for the biological effect.