This year marks the 50th anniversary of cisplatin’s accidental discovery as an anti-cancer drug. Despite its horrible side effects, and the ability of cancers to become resistant to it, the drug remains as relevant now as it was when it first reached the market. And the good news is that the drug can, and is, being made better. New formulations are being designed to make it more effective and less toxic. The history of cisplatin The history of cisplatin starts not in 1965, but in 1844, when it was first created by Italian chemist Michele Peyrone .
For a long time it was known as Peyrone’s chloride. But the really important event was its accidental discovery as a cancer treatment by Barnett Rosenberg, a biophysical chemist. At the time, Rosenberg was trying to study the effect electric fields had on bacterial growth. During his experiments, he found bacteria grew 300 times their normal…
