A SERIES OF NEW SULFONAMIDES WHICH ARE UNAFFECTED BY p-AMINOBENZOIC ACID

Probably the greatest contribution to the field of chemotherapy was Domagk's introduction of prontosil (chrysoidin) in 1935. Trefouel et al. (1935) soon theo-rized that in the tissues prontosil was broken down at the azo linkage to triamino-benzene and p-aminobenzenesulfonamide, and that this latter group was the active part of the prontosil molecule. The introduction of prontosil and its active principle, sulfanilamide, opened the way for successful treatment of streptococcal, gonococcal, and meningococcal infections. Inasmuch as pneumo-coccus infections did not respond to sulfanilamide therapy, it remained for Whitby (1938) to introduce sulfapyridine, a sulfonamide effective in the treatment of pneumococcus infections as well as those previously mentioned. With this impetus given to sulfonamide research, several new and important compounds were soon introduced: sulfathiazole by Fosbinder and Walter (1939), sulfadiazine by Roblin et at. (1940), and sulfaguanidine by Marshall e al. (1940). Up to this period none of the sulfonamide compounds were found to have any appreci-able effect against certain other groups of organisms, notably the anaerobi