Bayer Annual Report 1998

Aspirin® was on board when the American spacecraft "Apollo 11" landed on the moon in 1969. In tablet form, the volume of Aspirin® produced each year would reach to the moon and back.

Hippocrates of Kos (left) was aware of the willow bark's pain-relieving effect 2,500 years ago. Right, Dr. Felix Hoffmann, the "father" of Aspirin®.

March 6, 1999 - a historic date. On this day a certain tall building in Germany became famous throughout the world. Fifty professional mountaineers transformed Bayer's 122 meter high, 66 meter long and 19 meter wide administration building in Leverkusen into a gigantic Aspirin® box - in honor of what is probably the best-known brand name in the history of medicine. Aspirin®, the name for what was to become the "pharmaceutical of the century," was registered as a trademark exactly a century earlier on March 6, 1899. Aspirin®, whose active ingredient is acetylsalicylic acid (ASA), is still the world's most widely used pain reliever. As a treatment for headaches and migraine, it is seen as the "Gold Standard" - the medical community's term for the best product for a certain indication. And now, on the threshold of the new millennium, Aspirin® has embarked on a new career in the prevention of heart attack and stroke. But that's not all. The results of clinical studies increasingly suggest that regular use of ASA even prevents certain types of cancer. In December 1998 the American microbiologist Dr. Paul Schwenger of the University of New York was presented the "International Aspirin® Young Researchers' Award" in Budapest for his findings concerning the possible effects of ASA in cancer prevention.

Felix Hoffmann's discovery: a medical milestone

Advertisement on wheels: An "Aspirin®" car in the Netherlands around 1930.

Bayer chemist Dr. Felix Hoffmann could never have imagined that the natural substance he chemically "refined" (salicylic acid) would one day become the world's most famous and widely used remedy. A legend may well throw light on the subject: a very personal family circumstance was evidently at the bottom of one of the greatest success stories in medical history. Felix Hoffmann's father had been suffering for many years from rheumatoid arthritis, with the chronic pain rendering him all but unable to move. Doctors had prescribed sodium salicylate, a revolting-tasting medicine based on salicylic acid - which, as we know today, is produced by many plants as a substance to defend them against their natural enemies. It was prescribed 2,500 years ago as a natural remedy by Hippocrates of Kos, the father of medicine - as an extract from the bark of the willow tree. Each time Hoffmann's father took the medicine, he vomited. Also, his stomach lining was severely affected by the long years of treatment. Whether Hoffmann junior took it upon himself out of concern for his father to improve the natural substance salicylic acid, as he later declared, or whether he was instructed to do so, can now no longer be established with absolute certainty.

The formula for success:
Aspirin® is both effective and well tolerated

What is certain is that Felix Hoffmann was the first to succeed in producing salicylic acid in a 100 percent chemically pure and stable form through acetylation, on August 10, 1897, according to his laboratory journal. Although other chemists from Germany, France and Italy had tried this as well, none had met with success. Unlike previous researchers, Hoffmann succeeded in producing acetylsalicylic acid that no longer contained free salicylic acid, so the dreaded side-effects triggered by this substance did not occur. Moreover, since it remained stable, it was not in danger of losing its therapeutic efficacy so quickly.

Hoffmann's strength lay in the fact that he had made use of the information provided by his predecessors in literature and had learned from their mistakes. The first clinical trials showed that, in addition to being highly effective, the compound that he had synthesized was well tolerated. This was the crucial breakthrough: The new Bayer product became the best-known painkiller in the world almost overnight. It was on January 23, 1899 - just 15 months after its successful synthesis - that the name "Aspirin®" was suggested. The "A" stands for acetyl, and the second syllable "spir" is derived from spireic acid, obtained from meadowsweet (Spiraea ulmaria) and chemically identical to salicylic acid.

Legend has it the preparation was named after Saint Aspirinus, a bishop of Naples who was said to be the patron saint of headache sufferers. Just a few days later, on February 1, 1899, an application was filed to register the name as a trademark. Aspirin® was finally entered into the trademark register of the Imperial Patent Office in Berlin on March 6, 1899.

The "pharmaceutical of the century"
makes history

Yet not only the preparation was right on target - its name was, too. For countless people the world over, Aspirin® is still, 100 years down the line, quite simply the quintessential painkiller. Despite an abundance of imitations, the original Aspirin® is still just as inseparable from the Bayer name as it was 100 years ago. In the last two decades, the substance from Bayer's laboratories has broken all records in medical history. ASA has been tested in more clinical trials than any other medicine in the world, with hundreds of thousands of patients taking part.

Since 1995, one of Bayer's locations for Aspirin® production has been at Bitterfeld in eastern Germany. The facility is among the most modern of its kind in the world.

Bayer Bitterfeld GmbH produces 2.3 billion Aspirin® tablets a year - to the strictest quality standards. The five-billionth tablet rolled off the production line in September 1998.

Recent discoveries about Aspirin® - such as that of the mechanism of action for acetylsalicylic acid, for which the British pharmocologist John Vane in 1982 received the Nobel Prize for Medicine and a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II - have prompted many experts to dub the preparation the "pharmaceutical of the century". And not without reason. If the current annual output of the active substance acetylsalicylic acid were pressed into 500-milligram tablets, the resulting 100 billion tablets would make a chain that would easily stretch from the earth to the moon and back.

Heading into a promising future

Despite its unusually old age for a product, Aspirin® has never lost its youth. The Bayer medication is as much a focus of scientific interest as ever, which is proven by the appearance of more than 3,500 scientific publications on ASA each year. And Aspirin® is always good for surprises. A new worldwide career is being predicted for ASA - in prevention of heart attack and stroke. The accompanying clinical studies are among the most extensive in medical history, and have shown that ASA, the active substance in Aspirin®, can also help to prevent colon cancer.

Aspirin® is and remains a phenomenon. A phenomenon that continues to fascinate Nobel laureate Sir John Vane: "The Aspirin® star is shining more brightly than ever. Hardly a day goes by without sensational reports of further ASA successes. No medicine has as fascinating and record-laden a story - a story which, it appears, will in future be further enriched by many exciting chapters."