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| | | Penicillin is the first naturally occurring antibiotic discovered and also the first to be used therapeutically. It works by preventing the cross-linking of small peptide chains in peptidoglycan, the main wall polymer of bacteria. It is called a "Wonder Drug" since it saved millions of lives in WWII and is still in use today.
(1) Discovery of Penicillin
In 1896 or so, a French medical student named Ernest Duchesne made the earliest record that a substance produced by a mold could apparently kill bacteria. However, his discovery was completely neglected and forgotten.
In 1928, a Scottish physician Alexander Fleming rediscovered the phenomenon by accident while he observed a fungal colony had grown as a contaminant on an agar plate streaked with the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus. The fungal contaminant was identified as Penicillium notatum and the fungal metabolite was thus named penicillin. Fleming found that Penicillin was effective against many Gram positive bacteria in laboratory conditions, and he even used locally applied, crude preparations of this substance to control eye infections. However, he could not purify this compound because of its instability. Fleming presented his findings in 1929, but they raised little interest. He published a report on penicillin and its potential uses in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology.
(2) Development of Penicillin as a therapeutic agent
Two Scientists at Oxford University, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, came across Fleming paper in 1938 while they were working on lysozyme. This Oxford team began experimenting with the penicillin mold by injecting it in live mice and a few human subjects and saw amazing results. In 1941, they were forced to move their research to U.S. due to WWII. Producing large amount of Penicillin became possible in Peoria, Illinois where excellent fermentation techniques were developed and abundant nutrient bases (corn, cantaloupe, etc.) to grow Penicillin were available.
(3) Global distribution to allied troops
When U.S. entered WWII, the benefits of Penicillin were known and the government pushed industry into producing penicillin, recruiting more than 21 chemical companies into production. From January to May 1943, only 400 million units of penicillin had been made; by the time the war ended, U.S. companies were making 650 billion units a month.
The history of Penicillin proved again that opportunity usually favors the "prepared mind". However, I think it is also true that opportunity usually also favors the "prepared society". If the world is not ready, the discovery is doomed to be overlooked and hoping one day that it will be re-discovered. Penicillin also proves that it takes a team of scientists with different expertise to develop a finding to a therapeutic agent (Biologist, chemist, and agriculture researcher and so on in Penicillin's case). Last but not the least, government policy and intervention also proved to be critical.
References:
1. How Penicillin Kills Bacteria
2. Fleming discovers penicillin 1928-1945
3. What the Heck is Penicillin? | | | | | | |
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