Dihydropyridines: Progress in Pharmacology and Therapy

At the Pharmacology Workshop held in Wuppertal on December 11, 1992, Dr. Alexander Scriabine was honored for his contribution to drug develop­ ment at our company. Dr. Scriabine was the first pharmacologist to join Miles in West Haven, CT, in 1979. He established the Miles Institute for Preclinical Pharmacology, at the Yale campus, which was devoted to cardiovascular, metabolic and, 2 later, CNS research. At that time Ca + antagonists were not yet available in the USA, but well established in Europe. At Bayer, Bossert and Vater discovered 1,4-dihydropyridines in the late 1960s, and Fleckenstein identified 2 nifedipine as the most potent Ca + antagonist available at that time. This 2 discovery led to the establishment of Ca + antagonists as leading cardio­ vascular drugs throughout the world and to the marketing of nifedipine as Adalat by Bayer. The main function of the Miles Institute for Preclinical 2 Pharmacology was the introduction of Bayer Ca + antagonists to the American scientific community. Scriabine, in collaboration with Stanislav Kazda and Bernward Garthoff, contributed numerous publications on the 2 pharmacology of Bayer Ca + antagonists, supported many collaborative studies with extramural investigators in the USA, and organized several 2 international conferences on Ca + antagonists. These conferences contri­ buted to the recognition of the importance of these drugs for the treatment of hypertension and coronary heart disease in North America.