Sahachiro Hata

was a prominent Japanese bacteriologist who researched the bubonic plague under Kitasato Shibasaburō and assisted in developing the antisyphilitic drug arsphenamine in 1909 in the laboratory of Paul Ehrlich.

Hata received three unsuccessful nominations for the Nobel Prize, one from Swiss surgeon Emil Kocher for Chemistry in 1911 and two by Japanese colleagues Hayazo Ito and G Osawa for Physiology or Medicine in 1912 and 1913, respectively. Hata worked as an assistant for Kitasato and conducted research into the prevention of plague and other epidemic diseases. Hata helped formulate the "Communicable Disease Prevention Law," which was enacted in 1897 as the first legal framework for disease control in Japan. Among other things the law mandated reporting of certain disease to a public health agency in service of their control.

Finding the 'magic bullet' for syphilis Sahachiro Hata and Paul Ehrlich search for the 'magic bullet' for syphilis.

In 1909, Sahachiro Hata went to work in Paul Ehrlich's laboratory, the National Institute for Experimental Therapeutics, in Frankfurt, Germany to help Ehrlich in his quest to develop a treatment for syphilis called the 'magic bullet.' Syphilis was initially treated by topical-application or ingestion of mercury, which was very toxic.

When Hata injected compound 606, arsphenamine, into rabbits infected with syphilis, he found it to be effective against syphilis in vivo. It was called compound 606 because it was the sixth in the sixth group of compounds synthesized for testing by Ehrlich and Hata. Arsphenamine was first thought to be ineffective when it was tested by Ehrlich's former assistants, so their inadequate methods were blamed for the delay of this important discovery. The drug was marketed under the name Salvarsan and gained international acclaim as the "arsenic that saves" and as the first man-made antibiotic.