Penicillin is one of the earliest discovered and widely used antibiotic agents, derived from the Penicillium mold. Antibiotics are natural substances that are released by bacteria and fungi into the their environment, as a means of inhibiting other organisms - it is chemical warfare on a microscopic scale.
- Alexander Fleming
- born August. 6, 1881 , Darvel, Scotland
- died March 11, 1955 , London, England
At the time, however, the importance of Alexander Fleming's discovery was not known. Use of penicillin did not begin until the 1940s when Howard Florey and Ernst Chain isolated the active ingredient and developed a powdery form of the medicine.
History of Penicillin
Originally noticed by a French medical student, Ernest Duchesne, in 1896.
Penicillin was re-discovered by bacteriologist Alexander Fleming working at St. Mary's Hospital in London in 1928. He observed that a plate culture of Staphylococcus had been contaminated by a blue-green mold and that colonies of bacteria adjacent to the mold were being dissolved. Curious, Alexander Fleming grew the mold in a pure culture and found that it produced a substance that killed a number of disease-causing bacteria. Naming the substance penicillin, Dr. Fleming in 1929 published the results of his investigations, noting that his discovery might have therapeutic value if it could be produced in quantity.
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin
Hodgkin used x-rays to find the structural layouts of atoms and the overall molecular shape of over 100 molecules including penicillin. Dorothy's discovery of the molecular layout of penicillin helped lead scientists to develop other antibiotics.
Dr. Howard Florey
It was not until 1939 that Dr. Howard Florey, a future Nobel Laureate, and three colleagues at Oxford University began intensive research and were able to demonstrate penicillin's ability to kill infectious bacteria. As the war with Germany continued to drain industrial and government resources, the British scientists could not produce the quantities of penicillin needed for clinical trials on humans and turned to the United States for help. They were quickly referred to the Peoria Lab where scientists were already working on fermentation methods to increase the growth rate of fungal cultures. One July 9, 1941, Howard Florey and Norman Heatley, Oxford University Scientists came to the U.S. with a small but valuable package containing a small amount of penicillin to begin work.
Pumping air into deep vats containing corn steep liquor (a non-alcoholic by-product of the wet milling process) and the addition of other key ingredients was shown to produce faster growth and larger amounts of penicillin than the previous surface-growth method. Ironically, after a worldwide search, it was a strain of penicillin from a moldy cantaloupe in a Peoria market that was found and improved to produce the largest amount of penicillin when grown in the deep vat, submerged conditions.
Andrew J. Moyer
As a result of their work, two members of the British group were awarded the Nobel Prize. Dr. Andrew J. Moyer from the Peoria Lab was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame and both the British and Peoria Laboratories were designated as International Historic Chemical Landmarks.
Andrew J Moyer Patent
On May 25, 1948, Andrew J Moyer was granted a patent for a method of the mass production of penicillin.Resistance to Penicillin
Four years after drug companies began mass-producing penicillin in 1943, microbes began appearing that could resist it.
The first bug to battle penicillin was Staphylococcus aureus. This bacterium is often a harmless passenger in the human body, but it can cause illness, such as pneumonia or toxic shock syndrome, when it overgrows or produces a toxin.
(Gr. anti, "against"; bios, "life") An antibiotic is a chemical substance produced by one organism that is destructive to another. The word antibiotic came from the word antibiosis a term coined in 1889 by Louis Pasteur's pupil Paul Vuillemin which means a process by which life could be used to destroy life.
