‘A must read.’ Siddhartha Mukherjee, bestselling author of  The Emperor of All Maladies

What does it take to create a new medicine? The trajectory from laboratory to your neighbourhood pharmacy rarely runs smooth. Drug hunting demands radical leaps of imagination, the expertise of many? and a hefty dollop of luck. Unsurprisingly, ‘eureka’ moments come few and far between – but, when they do, they change lives.

Charting the discovery of eight revolutionary drugs, Dr William Pao cuts to the innovative heart of biomedical research and celebrates the tireless work of the scientists, doctors, patients and families fighting for better medical care. For each of these medicines, whether a potentially life-saving new treatment for cancer, or something as commonplace as paracetamol, there stands a cast of characters and a wealth of stories. Documenting these fascinating journeys, Breakthrough grants a privileged, behind-the-scenes look at the medicines that improve – and very often save – our lives.

Foreword by Nobel Prize-Winner Harold Varmus

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‘Utterly compelling.’ Dame Kate Bingham, author of  The Long Shot

‘A celebration of medical innovation.’ Guardian

‘Captivating… An essential read.’  Art Levinson, former CEO of Genentech

We often hear about the dark side of the pharmaceutical industry – from extortionate pricing to the opioid epidemic. But there’s another story to be told.

Through the story of eight revolutionary treatments, Dr William Pao cuts to the innovative heart of medical science and celebrates the tireless work of those fighting for better care. Behind each of these medicines – whether a potentially life-saving new treatment for cancer, or something as commonplace as paracetamol – there stands a cast of characters and a wealth of stories.

The trajectory from the laboratory to the local chemist is rarely a straight line. Eureka moments are few are far between. Drug hunting demands leaps of imagination and lateral thinking, the accumulation of the knowledge and expertise of many, and – nearly always – a hefty dollop of luck.

Breakthrough documents these journeys and grants a privileged look at the stories behind the medicines that improve – and very often save – our lives.

Biomimetics literally means emulating biology – and in a broader sense the term covers technological advances where the original inspiration came from nature. The Earth is a vast laboratory where the mechanisms of natural selection have enabled evolutionary solutions to be developed to a wide range of problems.

In this new title in the Hot Science series, science writer Brian Clegg looks at how humans have piggybacked on natural experimentation, redeploying a solution to create things that make our lives easier. He looks at how the hooks on burdock seeds inspired the creation of Velcro, how the stickiness of the feet of geckos and frogs has been used to create gripping surfaces, such as tyre treads, and how even the most basic optical enhancement in the form of spectacles is itself a form of biomimetics.

‘I couldn’t put down this thriller . . . the perfect book to read by the fire this winter.’ Bill Gates

Winner of the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award 2018

The riveting true story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of Theranos, the multibillion-dollar biotech startup founded by Elizabeth Holmes, by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end, despite pressure from its charismatic CEO and threats by her lawyers.

In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup ‘unicorn’ promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood testing significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: the technology didn’t work.

In Bad Blood, John Carreyrou tells the riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley.

‘Chilling . . . Reads like a West Coast version of All the President’s Men.’ New York Times Book Review