Max Bockmuehl

Max Bockmühl (born September 2, 1882 in Barmen ; † January 5, 1949 in Bad Soden am Taunus ) was a German chemist . Together with Gustav Ehrhart, he first produced the fully synthetic opioid methadone .

Career

After an apprenticeship as a pharmacist , he studied pharmacy in Munich, which he completed with the state examination and the appointment as a pharmacist. Then Max Bockmühl began studying chemistry at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich with Adolf von Baeyer . On June 9, 1909 he was at Alfred Einhorn , the inventor of Novocains , on the subject of studies in the eugenol and Isoeugenolreihe doctorate . In 1910 he went to Farbwerke Hoechst AG , where he became one of the co-founders of the pharmaceutical laboratory. In 1927 he was granted power of attorney and in 1930 he became head of the company's entire pharmaceutical research . Hoechst AG was meanwhile part of IG Farben . In 1937 Bockmühl became deputy director and a year later director of this division. After the war, Bockmühl, who was never a member of the NSDAP, was appointed acting works manager by the US military government in July 1945. At the end of November of the same year he was called off again because he obviously left too many old National Socialists in their old positions in the company.

Bockmühl was an honorary doctorate from Frankfurt's Johann Wolfgang Goethe University . He was with the widow of the Bavarian Chief Medical Officer Alfred Pellengahr, Bertha geb. Brandl († 1963), married. They had no offspring.

plant

In 1912 , Bockmühl was the first to synthesize the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug or analgesic amizol (Melubrin) . His job was to make an injectable pyrazolone .

Otto Schaumann and Otto Eisleb synthesized the first fully synthetic opioid at Hoechst in July 1937 with pethidine . In 1939 it was marketed under the brand name Dolantin . Max Bockmühl and his colleague Gustav Ehrhart established some structural analogies between morphine and pethidine. They postulated that the central carbon atom is responsible for the analgesic effect. In the winter of 1937/38 they began with the synthesis of over 300 compounds that have diphenylmethane with the central carbon atom as a structural element. At the end of 1939 they received the compound (±) -6-dimethylamino-4,4-diphenylheptan-3-one which was given the development code VA 10820. In the first animal experiments, Ehrhart and Bockmühl found that VA 10820 has a five to ten times stronger analgesic effect than pethidine. VA 10820 was then given the generic name Amidon in mid-1941 . Bockmühl and Ehrhart applied for a patent for the entire class of materials as early as September 11, 1938. Due to the turmoil of World War II , Amidon was no longer clinically tested. The full analgesic and therapeutic potential of VA 10820 was only proven after the war by Otto Schaumann at Hoechst, or independently of him by Charles C. Scott and KK Chen, both employees at the Lilly Research Laboratories of Eli Lilly . As part of the patent and regulatory expropriation of IG Farben, VA 10820 came to the United States. 1947 received VA 10820 the generic name methadone or in the US Methadone . In the same year Eli Lilly launched the product under the brand name Dolophine . In January 1949, after the dissolution of IG Farben, Hoechst AG was able to bring methadone onto the market as a strong pain reliever under the name Polamidon . In the same month Max Bockmühl died in Bad Soden am Taunus at the age of 66.

Publications

• Studies in the eugenol and isoeugenol series. Inaugural dissertation to obtain the doctorate of the high philosophical faculty (Section II) of the Kgl. Bayer. Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. Erlangen 1909.
• Antipyretics and analgesics of the pyrazole series. In: Medicine and Chemistry. Leverkusen 1933.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Stephan H. Lindner: Hoechst - An IG Farben plant in the Third Reich. CH Beck, 2005, ISBN 3-406-52959-3 , p. 197. Limited preview in Google book search
2. ^ Stephan H. Lindner: Hoechst - An IG Farben plant in the Third Reich. CH Beck, 2005, ISBN 3-406-52959-3 , p. 323. Restricted preview in the Google book search
3. ↑ ^{a b} R. J. Defalque, AJ Wright: The early history of methadone. Myths and facts.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 544 kB) In: Bulletin of anesthesia history. Volume 25, Number 3, October 2007, pp. 13-16, ISSN 1522-8649 . PMID 20506765 .   
4. ↑ Dr.rer.nat. Max BOCKMÜHL. Local family book Coesfeld, in genealogienetz.de, accessed on February 16, 2012.
5. ↑ W.-D. Müller-Jahncke, C. Friedrich, U. Meyer: Medicinal history. Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, 2005, ISBN 3-8047-2113-3 , p. 138.
6. ↑ G. Ehrhart, O. Schaumann: Polamidon, a new, strong analgesic. In: Med monthly. Volume 3, 1949, pp. 605-606.
7. ↑ M. Bockmühl, G. Ehrhart: About a new class of spasmolytic and analgesic compounds (I). In: Liebig Ann Chem. Volume 561, 1949, pp. 52-85.
8. ↑ M. Bockmühl, G. Ehrhart: Process for the preparation of basic esters. German Reich patent No. 711069, filing date: September 11, 1938, publication: September 25, 1941.
9. ↑ PO Wolff: On pethidine and methadone derivatives. In: Bulletin of the World Health Organization. Volume 2, Number 2, 1949, pp. 193-204, ISSN  1564-0604 . PMID 15409516 . PMC 2553950 (free full text).
10. ^ CC Scott, KK Chen: The action of 1,1-diphenyl-1- (dimethylaminoisopropyl) -butanone-2, a potent analgesic agent. In: Federation proceedings. Volume 5, Number 1, 1946, p. 201, ISSN  0014-9446 . PMID 20983210 .
11. ^ EM Stoya: M for methadone. ( Memento of the original from September 9, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: The PTA IN THE PHARMACY. 11, 2011, p. 20.