Sulfonamide (medicine)
Sulfonamide drugs were the first antimicrobial drugs. They paved the way for the antibiotic revolution in medicine. Experiments with the first sulfonamide began in 1932 in the laboratories of Bayer AG, at that time a component of the huge German chemical trust IG Farben. After years of fruitless trial-and-error work on hundreds of compounds, a team led by physician/researcher Gerhard Domagk finally found one that worked: a red dye synthesized by Bayer chemist Josef Klarer which had remarkable effects on stopping some bacterial infections in mice. The first official communication about the breakthrough discovery was not published until 1935, more than two years after the drug was patented by Klarer and his research partner Fritz Mietzsch.