Meanwhile, biochemist Norman Heatley extracted penicillin from huge volumes of filtrate coming off the production line by extracting it into amyl acetate and then back into water, using a countercurrent system. In effect, the Oxford laboratory was being turned into a penicillin factory. A team of "penicillin girls" was employed, at £2 a week, to inoculate and generally look after the fermentation. Later, a customized fermentation vessel was designed for ease of removing and, to save space, renewing the broth beneath the surface of the mold. They began growing it in a strange array of culture vessels such as baths, bedpans, milk churns and food tins. To carry out a program of animal experiments and clinical trials the team needed to process up to 500 liters a week of mold filtrate. Their work on the purification and chemistry of penicillin began in earnest in 1939, just when wartime conditions were beginning to make research especially difficult. It was Howard Florey, Ernst Chain and their colleagues at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at Oxford University who turned penicillin from a laboratory curiosity into a life-saving drug. Others, including Harold Raistrick, Professor of Biochemistry at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, tried to purify penicillin but failed. ![]() This at least was of practical benefit to bacteriologists, and kept interest in penicillin going. At this stage it looked as if its main application would be in isolating penicillin-insensitive bacteria from penicillin-sensitive bacteria in a mixed culture. Fleming published his findings in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology in June 1929, with only a passing reference to penicillin's potential therapeutic benefits. It proved to be very unstable, and they were only able to prepare solutions of crude material to work with. He then set his assistants, Stuart Craddock and Frederick Ridley, the difficult task of isolating pure penicillin from the mold juice. The zone immediately around the mold-later identified as a rare strain of Penicillium notatum-was clear, as if the mold had secreted something that inhibited bacterial growth.įleming found that his "mold juice" was capable of killing a wide range of harmful bacteria, such as streptococcus, meningococcus and the diphtheria bacillus. It was dotted with colonies, save for one area where a blob of mold was growing. He noticed something unusual on one dish. Returning from holiday on September 3, 1928, Fleming began to sort through petri dishes containing colonies of Staphylococcus, bacteria that cause boils, sore throats and abscesses. But it was not until 1928 that penicillin, the first true antibiotic, was discovered by Alexander Fleming, Professor of Bacteriology at St. This phenomenon has long been known it may explain why the ancient Egyptians had the practice of applying a poultice of moldy bread to infected wounds. Hospitals were full of people with blood poisoning contracted from a cut or a scratch, and doctors could do little for them but wait and hope.Īntibiotics are compounds produced by bacteria and fungi which are capable of killing, or inhibiting, competing microbial species. Before its introduction there was no effective treatment for infections such as pneumonia, gonorrhea or rheumatic fever. Penicillin heralded the dawn of the antibiotic age. Landmark Designation and AcknowledgmentsĪlexander Fleming’s Discovery of Penicillin.Penicillin, WWII and Commercial Production.Pharmaceutical Companies Support Production Penicillin Production in the United States during WWII.Penicillin Research at Oxford University.Alexander Fleming’s Discovery of Penicillin.The discovery of penicillin and the initial recognition of its therapeutic potential occurred in the United Kingdom, but, due to World War II, the United States played the major role in developing large-scale production of the drug, thus making a life-saving substance in limited supply into a widely available medicine. The introduction of penicillin in the 1940s, which began the era of antibiotics, has been recognized as one of the greatest advances in therapeutic medicine. In Spanish: Descubrimiento y desarrollo de la penicilina Squibb & Sons (now Bristol-Myers Squibb Company). Department of Agriculture National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research in Peoria, Ill., and the five American pharmaceutical companies that contributed to penicillin production research during WWII: Abbott Laboratories, Lederle Laboratories (now Pfizer, Inc.), Merck & Co., Inc., Chas. Designated November 19, 1999, at the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum in London, U.K.
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