History
Martin Freund and (Jakob) Edmund Speyer of the University of Frankfurt in Germany published the first synthesis of oxycodone from thebaine in 1916. When Freund died, in 1920, Speyer wrote his obituary. Speyer, born to a Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main in 1878, became a victim of the Holocaust. He died on 5 May 1942, the second day of deportations from the Lodz Ghetto; his death was noted in the ghettos chronicle.The first clinical use of the drug was documented in 1917, the year after it was first developed. It was first introduced to the U.S. market in May 1939. In early 1928, Merck introduced a combination product containing scopolamine, oxycodone, and ephedrine under the German initials for the ingredients SEE, which was later renamed Scophedal (SCOpolamine, ePHEDrine, and eukodAL) in 1942. It was last manufactured in 1987, but can be compounded. This combination is essentially an oxycodone analogue of the morphine-based "twilight sleep", with ephedrine added to reduce circulatory and respiratory effects. The drug became known as the "Miracle Drug of the 1930s" in Continental Europe and elsewhere and it was the Wehrmachts choice for a battlefield analgesic for a time. The drug was expressly designed to provide what the patent application and package insert referred to as "very deep analgesia and profound and intense euphoria" as well as tranquillisation and anterograde amnesia useful for surgery and battlefield wounding cases.
Pegfilgrastim, sold under the brand name Neulasta among others, is a PEGylated form of the recombinant human granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (GCSF) analog filgrastim. It serves to stimulate the production of white blood cells (neutrophils). Pegfilgrastim was developed by Amgen.Pegfilgrastim treatment can be used to stimulate bone marrow to produce more neutrophils to fight infection in patients undergoing chemotherapy.Pegfilgrastim has a human half-life of 15 to 80 hours, much longer than the parent filgrastim (3–4 hours).Pegfilgrastim was approved for medical use in the United States in January 2002, in the European Union in August 2002, and in Australia in September 2002. Medical uses
Pegfilgrastim is indicated to decrease the incidence of infection, as manifested by febrile neutropenia, in people with non-myeloid malignancies receiving myelosuppressive anti-cancer drugs associated with a clinically significant incidence of febrile neutropenia; and to increase survival in people acutely exposed to myelosuppressive doses of radiation (hematopoietic subsyndrome of acute radiation syndrome). Biosimilars
Ristempa was approved for medical use in Australia in January 2017.Tezmota was approved for medical use in Australia in March 2018.Pegfilgrastim-jmdb (Fulphila) was approved for medical use in the United States in June 2018.Fulphila was approved for medical use in Australia in August 2018.Pelgraz was approved for medical use in the European Union in September 2018.Udenyca was approved for medical use in the European Union in September 2018.On November 2, 2018, Coherus Biosciences received FDA approval for its biosimilar, pegfilgrastim-cbqv (Udenyca).