The development of SSRIs happened in a very short period of time beginning in the 1970s. How SSRIs were developed is acknowledged as a major scientific breakthrough. SSRIs were the first purposefully designed class of psychotropic medications and are credited with marking a new era in psychotropic drug development. Prior to SSRIs, all psychotropic medications, including MAO-Is and Tricyclics, were the result of chance observation. The rational used to develop SSRIs was to design a new drug that could target a specific neural site of action, in this case uptake pumps, while avoiding effects on other sites such as receptors. The idea was to produce agents that are more selective and therefore more effective, safer, and better tolerated than older medications.
The first SSRI marketed was zimelidine by Astra. Eventually five SSRIs were marketed successfully in multiple countries around the world. Each was developed by a different company:
Citalopram by Lundbeck
Fluvoxamine by Solvay
Fluoxetine by Lilly
Paroxetine by SmithKline-Beecham
Sertraline by Pfizer
The fact that the first five SSRIs were produced nearly simultaneously by five different companies shows just how important the discovery of drugs by rational drug development, opposed to by chance discovery, was.
The development of SSRIs happened in a very short period of time beginning in the 1970s. How SSRIs were developed is acknowledged as a major scientific breakthrough. SSRIs were the first purposefully designed class of psychotropic medications and are credited with marking a new era in psychotropic drug development. Prior to SSRIs, all psychotropic medications, including MAO-Is and Tricyclics, were the result of chance observation. The rational used to develop SSRIs was to design a new drug that could target a specific neural site of action, in this case uptake pumps, while avoiding effects on other sites such as receptors. The idea was to produce agents that are more selective and therefore more effective, safer, and better tolerated than older medications.