Professor Christoph Tang on BBC Four Extra Life medical documentary series

Exeter’s Professor Christoph Tang, Professorial Fellow in Cellular Pathology and Medicine, will feature on the BBC Four programme, Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer, tonight (Tuesday 25 May) at 10 pm. Extra Life is a documentary series exploring the effect of medicine on life expectancy.

Tonight’s episode, Medical Drugs, will examine how knowledge gained from the discovery of antibiotics and antiviral drugs underpins efforts to find treatment for new diseases.

Presenters Steven Johnson and David Olusoga learn the remarkable and often unsung work that has led to major medical advances.

‘Alexander Fleming’s famous discovery of antibiotics was followed – in the midst of World War II – by the roll-out of the manufacture of penicillin at scale, so that lives might be saved at a global level. Pioneering rational drug design in the 1980s led to the development of antiviral drugs for HIV and other previously untreatable diseases.

‘This knowledge – how to produce safe, effective drugs – now underpins efforts to find treatments for new diseases, such as Covid-19, today.’

Watch live tonight at 10 pm or catch up on BBC iPlayer here.