Forty-five years ago, agricultural and pharmaceutical chemistry appeared to be following
divergent paths. On the agricultural scene industrial companies were concentrating on the
synthesis of various classes of compounds and when a successful chemical candidate was
discovered, there was a good deal of joy among the synthetic chemists. We were told that
as a result of chemistry life would be better and, indeed, it was. Armed with synthetic agrochemicals,
the American farmer became the envy of the world. Essentially, with a vast
series of chemical permutations, the synthetic chemist had tamed nature and the biblical
admonition to subdue the natural world was well underway. One large agricultural chemical
company, now out of the business, had in its arsenal plans to pursue “cyclohexene”
chemistry among its many portfolios. Plans were already in motion to produce the series
and on the drawing board was the synthesis of abscisic acid, later discovered in both cotton
bolls and dormant buds of Acer pseudoplatanus as a biologically active natural product. The
chemical elucidation led, in part, to the winning of the Nobel Prize by Dr. John W. Cornforth.
How different the history might have been if the chemical company in question had
synthesized the molecule quite by accident. In the field of pharmacy, natural product therapy
was, at one time, the mainstay. With the rapid development of synthetic chemistry in
the mid to late 1900s, those agents soon began to replace natural remedies. Even so, several
natural products are still used today with examples that include morphine, codeine, lovastatin,
penicillin, and digoxin, to name but a few. Incidentally, griseofulvin was first
reported in 1939 as an antibiotic obtained from Penicillium griseofulvum. However, its use in
the treatment of fungal infections in humans was not demonstrated until almost 1960. During
the 20 years following its discovery, griseofulvin was used primarily as an agrochemical
fungicide for a short period. Interestingly, it is a prescription systemic fungicide that is
still used in medicine today.