David Jack (1924–2011) who revolutionised the treatment of asthma

• COPD mechanisms
• allergic lung disease
• asthma
• asthma mechanisms
• asthma pharmacology
• COPD pharmacology
• cough/mechanisms/pharmacology
• cytokine biology

Sir David Jack FRS, former Director of Research and Development at Glaxo, died on 8 November 2011 at the age of 87 years. He probably did more to benefit patients with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease than anyone else in history. He discovered the first β₂-selective agonist (salbutamol), the first inhaled corticosteroid (beclomethasone dipropionate), the first long-acting β₂-agonist (salmeterol), the most widely used inhaled corticosteroid (fluticasone propionate) and the best-selling asthma treatment of all time (Seretide). He also discovered several other important drugs, including the histamine H₂-receptor antagonist ranitidine (Zantac), which became the best-selling drug of its day, and sumatriptan (Imigran), a novel therapy for migraine.

David Jack was born in Markinch, Fife, the sixth and youngest child of a coal miner. It is extraordinary that the other great drug discoverer of our time, Sir James Black, who went on to discover β-blockers and histamine H₂-receptor antagonists, was born in the same year in a nearby village. James Black was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1988, and many think that David Jack should also have been similarly honoured. After secondary education at Buckhaven High School, David became an apprentice pharmacist with Boots the Chemists in Cupar, turning down an opportunity to study mathematics at the Edinburgh University, as his intention was to become a retail pharmacist. In 1944, he entered a BSc course in Chemistry and Pharmacy at the Royal Technical College in Glasgow (now Strathclyde University), where he won every …