Ivermectin

Ivermectin is an antiparasitic medication used to treat head lice, scabies, river blindness, strongyloidiasis, trichuriasis, ascariasis and lymphatic filariasis. It interferes with the nerves and muscles of parasites by binding to glutamate-gated chloride channels found in invertebrate nerve and muscle cells, increasing chloride ion flow and paralyzing the parasite. Satoshi Omura of Kitasato University isolated a strain of the soil bacterium Streptomyces avermitilis from woodland near a golf course on the coast of Honshu, Japan, in 1970, and William Campbell at Merck showed that cultures of the bacterium could treat roundworm infections in mice; the two developed modified compounds that became ivermectin, which Merck began marketing for veterinary use in 1981 and which received approval for human use in France in 1987. Omura and Campbell shared the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery.