Who is credited with inventing penicillin

Methods of freeze-drying under vacuum eventually gave the best results in purifying the penicillin to a stable, sterile, and usable final form. The steps of fermentation, recovery and purification and packaging quickly yielded to the cooperative efforts of the chemical scientists and engineers working on pilot production of penicillin. On March 1, , Pfizer opened the first commercial plant for large-scale production of penicillin by submerged culture in Brooklyn, New York.

Meanwhile, clinical studies in the military and civilian sectors were confirming the therapeutic promise of penicillin. The drug was shown to be effective in the treatment of a wide variety of infections, including streptococcal, staphylococcal and gonococcal infections.

The United States Army established the value of penicillin in the treatment of surgical and wound infections. Clinical studies also demonstrated its effectiveness against syphilis, and by , it was the primary treatment for this disease in the armed forces of Britain and the United States.

The increasingly obvious value of penicillin in the war effort led the War Production Board WPB in to take responsibility for increased production of the drug. The WPB investigated more than companies before selecting 21 to participate in a penicillin program under the direction of Albert Elder; in addition to Lederle, Merck, Pfizer and Squibb, Abbott Laboratories which had also been among the major producers of clinical supplies of penicillin to mid was one of the first companies to begin large-scale production.

These firms received top priority on construction materials and other supplies necessary to meet the production goals. The WPB controlled the disposition of all of the penicillin produced.

One of the major goals was to have an adequate supply of the drug on hand for the proposed D-Day invasion of Europe. Feelings of wartime patriotism greatly stimulated work on penicillin in the United Kingdom and the United States. For example, Albert Elder wrote to manufacturers in "You are urged to impress upon every worker in your plant that penicillin produced today will be saving the life of someone in a few days or curing the disease of someone now incapacitated.

Put up slogans in your plant! Place notices in pay envelopes! Create an enthusiasm for the job down to the lowest worker in your plant. As publicity concerning this new "miracle drug" began to reach the public, the demand for penicillin increased. But supplies at first were limited, and priority was given to military use.

Chester Keefer of Boston, Chairman of the National Research Council's Committee on Chemotherapy, had the unenviable task of rationing supplies of the drug for civilian use. Keefer had to restrict the use of the drug to cases where other methods of treatment had failed.

Part of his job was also to collect detailed clinical information about the use of the drug so that a fuller understanding of its potential and limitations could be developed.

Not surprisingly, Keefer was besieged with pleas for penicillin. A newspaper account in the New York Herald Tribune for October 17, , stated: "Many laymen - husbands, wives, parents, brothers, sisters, friends - beg Dr.

Keefer for penicillin. In every case the petitioner is told to arrange that a full dossier on the patient's condition be sent by the doctor in charge. When this is received, the decision is made on a medical, not an emotional basis. Fortunately, penicillin production began to increase dramatically by early Production of the drug in the United States jumped from 21 billion units in , to 1, billion units in , to more than 6. The American government was eventually able to remove all restrictions on its availability, and as of March 15, , penicillin was distributed through the usual channels and was available to the consumer in his or her corner pharmacy.

By , the annual production of penicillin in the United States was , billion units, and the price had dropped from twenty dollars per , units in to less than ten cents. Most British companies moved over to the deep tank fermentation production of penicillin, pioneered in the United States, after the end of the war to meet civilian needs. In the United Kingdom, penicillin first went on sale to the general public, as a prescription only drug, on June 1, In Britain, Chain and Abraham continued to work on the structure of the penicillin molecule, aided by the X-ray crystallographic work of Dorothy Hodgkin, also at Oxford.

The unique feature of the structure, which was finally established in , is the four-membered highly labile beta-lactam ring, fused to a thiazolidine ring. The co-operative efforts of American chemists, chemical engineers, microbiologists, mycologists, government agencies, and chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturers were equal to the challenge posed by Howard Florey and Norman Heatley in As Florey observed in , "too high a tribute cannot be paid to the enterprise and energy with which the American manufacturing firms tackled the large-scale production of the drug.

Had it not been for their efforts there would certainly not have been sufficient penicillin by D-Day in Normandy in to treat all severe casualties, both British and American. The plaque commemorating the event reads:. In , at St. Mary's Hospital, London, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. This discovery led to the introduction of antibiotics that greatly reduced the number of deaths from infection. Howard W. Florey, at the University of Oxford working with Ernst B.

Chain, Norman G. Heatley and Edward P. Abraham, successfully took penicillin from the laboratory to the clinic as a medical treatment in The discovery and development of penicillin was a milestone in twentieth century pharmaceutical chemistry. Plaques were also given to commemorate the contributions of the U. Adapted for the internet from "The discovery and development of penicillin ," produced by the American Chemical Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry in Discovery and Development of Penicillin.

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Source: Imperial War Museums The truth is that the details surrounding the discovery cannot be summarized without offering a distorted view of reality.

A reward for tenacity So, Fleming was not the first to discover the antibacterial properties of the Penicillium fungus. But I suppose that was exactly what I did. Soon, they were able to mass produce penicillin for use during World War II. He was also named one of the most important people of the 20th century by Time Magazine. In terms of his personal life, Fleming was known as modest, patient, quiet, shy, and unemotional.

He avoided attention and was even sometimes painfully silent around close friends and even his wife, Sarah Marion McElroy, a nurse. Fleming and his wife had a son, Robert, who became a general practitioner.

When she passed away after 34 years of marriage, Fleming had a very difficult time. He lost himself in his work, spending most of his time behind closed doors in the lab.

In , Fleming married Dr. Amalia Koutsouri-Vourekas in a Greek church in London. Tan SY, Tatsumara Y. Alexander Fleming — : discoverer of penicillin.