Sir James Black

Sir James Black (born June 14, 1924, Uddingston, Scot.—died March 21, 2010) was a Scottish pharmacologist who, along with George H. Hitchings and Gertrude B. Elion, received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1988 for his development of two important drugs, propranolol and cimetidine.

Black earned a medical degree from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in 1946. He taught at various universities for the next 10 years and then joined Imperial Chemical Industries as a senior pharmacologist in 1958. He became head of biological research at Smith Kline & French Laboratories in 1964, and he joined the Wellcome Research Laboratories as director of therapeutic research in 1978. From 1984 he was professor of analytical pharmacology at King’s College, London, becoming emeritus in 1993. From 1992 to 2006 Black served as chancellor of the University of Dundee in Scotland, and, in honour of his work, the university built the Sir James Black Centre, a research facility for the investigation of cancer, tropical diseases, and diabetes. Knighted in 1981, Black became a member of the Order of Merit in 2000.

Black’s drug discoveries arose out of his systematic research on the interactions between certain cell receptors in the body and chemicals in the bloodstream that attach to them. Black wanted to find a drug that would relieve angina pectoris—i.e., the spasms of intense pain felt in the chest when the heart is not receiving enough oxygen.

It was known that beta receptors in the heart muscle, when stimulated by the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine, cause the heartbeat to quicken and increase the strength of the heart’s contractions, thus increasing that organ’s oxygen requirement. Black developed a drug that would block the beta receptor sites, thus preventing epinephrine and norepinephrine from attaching to them. The resulting inhibition of the hormones’ excitatory effects reduced the heart’s demand for oxygen and could thus help relieve anginal pain. Other beta-blocking agents were subsequently developed to treat heart attacks, hypertension, migraines, and other conditions.

Black used a similar approach to develop a drug treatment for stomach and duodenal ulcers, which are largely caused by the stomach’s oversecretion of gastric acids. He developed a drug that could block the histamine receptors that stimulate the secretion of gastric acid in the stomach, and the new drug, cimetidine, revolutionized the treatment of gastric and duodenal ulcers.