Which scientist discovered antibiotics

Then, on February 12, , a year old policeman, Albert Alexander, became the first recipient of the Oxford penicillin. He had scratched the side of his mouth while pruning roses, and had developed a life-threatening infection with huge abscesses affecting his eyes, face, and lungs. Penicillin was injected and within days he made a remarkable recovery.

But supplies of the drug ran out and he died a few days later. Better results followed with other patients though and soon there were plans to make penicillin available for British troops on the battlefield.

War-time conditions made industrial production of penicillin difficult. Substantial amounts of penicillin would be needed for the extensive clinical trials required to confirm the promise of the early results and to provide adequate supplies of the drug for therapeutic use if it did live up to its potential. Florey recognized that large-scale production of penicillin was probably out of the question in Britain, where the chemical industry was fully absorbed in the war effort.

With the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, Florey and his colleague Norman Heatley traveled to the United States in the summer of to see if they could interest the American pharmaceutical industry in the effort to produce penicillin on a large scale.

Yale physiologist John Fulton helped to put his British colleagues in touch with individuals who might be able to assist them in their goal. This contact proved to be crucial to the success of the project, as the NRRL was a key contributor of innovations that made large-scale production of penicillin possible.

It was agreed that Heatley would remain in Peoria to share his expertise with his American colleagues. Within a few weeks, Andrew Moyer found that he could significantly increase the yield of penicillin by substituting lactose for the sucrose used by the Oxford team in their culture medium.

Shortly thereafter, Moyer made the even more important discovery that the addition of corn-steep liquor to the fermentation medium produced a ten-fold increase in yield. Corn-steep liquor was a by-product of the corn wetmilling process, and the NRRL, in an attempt to find a use for it, tried it in essentially all of its fermentation work.

Later, the Peoria laboratory increased the yield of penicillin still further by the addition of penicillin precursors, such as phenylacetic acid, to the fermentation medium. It was recognized that the Oxford group's method of growing the mold on the surface of a nutrient medium was inefficient, and that growth in submerged culture would be a superior process.

In submerged culture fermentation, the mold is grown in large tanks in a constantly agitated and aerated mixture, rather than just on the surface of the medium. Florey's Penicillium culture, however, produced only traces of penicillin when grown in submerged culture. Under the direction of Kenneth Raper, staff at the NRRL screened various Penicillium strains and found one that produced acceptable yields of penicillin in submerged culture.

Soon a global search was underway for better penicillin producing strains, with soil samples being sent to the NRRL from around the world. Ironically, the most productive strain came from a moldy cantaloupe from a Peoria fruit market. A more productive mutant of the so-called cantaloupe strain was produced with the use of X-rays at the Carnegie Institution.

When this strain was exposed to ultraviolet radiation at the University of Wisconsin, its productivity was increased still further. While Norman Heatley remained in Peoria helping the NRRL staff to get the penicillin work started, Howard Florey visited various pharmaceutical companies to try to interest them in the drug.

Although Florey was disappointed in the immediate results of his trip, three of the companies Merck, Squibb and Lilly had actually conducted some penicillin research before Florey's arrival and Pfizer seemed on the verge of investigating the drug as well. At this time, however, the promise of penicillin was still based on only limited clinical trials.

Florey next visited his old friend Alfred Newton Richards, then vice president for medical affairs at the University of Pennsylvania. The OSRD had been created in June, , to assure that adequate attention was given to research on scientific and medical problems relating to national defense. Richards had great respect for Florey and trusted his judgment about the potential value of penicillin.

He approached the four drug firms that Florey indicated had shown some interest in the drug Merck, Squibb, Lilly and Pfizer and informed them that they would be serving the national interest if they undertook penicillin production and that there might be support from the federal government. Richards convened a meeting in Washington, D. Department of Agriculture, participants included research directors Randolph T. Major of Merck; George A. SubbaRow of Lederle.

At this meeting, which was attended by the heads of Merck, Squibb, Pfizer and Lederle, as well as the company research directors, Robert Coghill's report on the success at the NRRL with corn steep liquor was encouraging to the industry leaders present. As Coghill later recalled, George W. Merck, who had been pessimistic about the possibility of producing adequate quantities of penicillin given the constraints of available fermentation techniques and yields," It was agreed that although the companies would pursue their research activities independently, they would keep the CMR informed of developments, and the Committee could make the information more widely available with the permission of the company involved if that were deemed in the public interest.

Although there was some concern that investments in fermentation processes might be wasted if a commercially-viable synthesis of penicillin were developed, other companies also began to show an interest in the drug.

Forever after, it has been a puzzle why he did not inject these or other laboratory animals with staphylococcus or other disease-causing bacteria before injecting them with the fluid containing penicillin. Perhaps the explanation lay in his belief that cures come from within the body itself, rather than from an external agent.

So he was not looking for a curative agent but rather focused on his new find as a topical antiseptic. In later years he claimed that the difficulties he had experienced in isolating and stabilizing penicillin, let alone the problems of producing sufficient quantities for clinical trials, had prevented him from realizing the full fruits of his research.

In fact, in the s, little notice was taken by the scientific community of his paper published in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology June Explore the oral history collection at the Science History Institute, with interviews dating back to Skip to main content. Bristol-Myers Squibb Corporation. Treatment with penicillin was hugely successful, and the US government began supporting the mass production of the drug. By D-Day in , penicillin was being widely used to treat troops for infections both in the field and in hospitals throughout Europe.

By the end of World War II, penicillin was nicknamed 'the wonder drug' and had saved many lives. Scientists in Oxford were instrumental in developing the mass production process, and Howard Florey and Ernst Chain shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine with Alexander Fleming for their role in creating the first mass-produced antibiotic. The history of antibiotics Antibiotics have been used for millennia to treat infections, although until the last century or so people did not know the infections were caused by bacteria.

Fleming remained with this research group for his entire career. As an Army Medical Corps captain in World War I, he witnessed many of his fellow soldiers die as a result of uncontrolled infection. At the time, antiseptics were used and often caused more harm than good. Fleming wrote an article discussing the anaerobic bacteria present in deep wounds, which were not destroyed by the antiseptics. His research was not accepted initially, but he continued on.

In , Fleming discovered lysozyme, an enzyme with weak antibacterial properties that inhibited bacterial growth. He also found lysozyme in fingernails, hair, saliva, skin, and tears. In his research, Fleming found that lysozyme was effective against only a small number of non-harmful bacteria. In , he started to research common staphylococcal bacteria.