What makes penicillin

Later, J. Martin discovered that fermenting sugar could yield citric acid. But these were ideas ahead of their time because no one knew how to manufacture citric acid from these sources on a commercial scale. That is, until James Currie, a food chemist, discovered that citric acid could be fermented from certain strains of the mold Aspergillis niger combined with sugar.

During our first meeting, Mr. Currie is up here now and I think he has something interesting. Pfizer officials, led by John Anderson, realized that the company had to reduce its vulnerability as an importer of raw materials. The war cut off the supply of Italian citrus, and all raw material deliveries from Europe were threatened by the German submarine blockade. Supplying medicines and chemicals for the war helped the company survive, but overall sales declined. Now, more than ever, Pfizer needed to find ways to produce citric acid without using citrus.

Currie, aided by his precocious year-old lab assistant Jasper Kane, tackled the fermentation problem. He knew Aspergillis niger is aerobic, meaning it needs air to grow.

Currie tried to grow the mold in a large flat pan, but had limited success. He cut the pan into smaller, shallower pans, and immediately increased the yield. Still, the process was subject to a number of variables: the quality of the mold spores, the purity of the cultures, contamination of air and the medium, humidity and temperature, and many others. Currie plugged on, turning to Gordon Dryer machines, which controlled humidity and temperature. He also experimented with different-sized pans and their depth and temperatures.

The new structure began operating in ; that year the output of citric acid using fermentation technology far outpaced the production based on lemons and limes.

By the end of the decade Pfizer was dominating the market and in the company reached a milestone; it produced 5. And Pfizer gained even more experience as the company searched for ways to use fermentation to produce other chemicals or to improve existing methods.

For example, in , Jasper Kane substituted molasses, a cheap by-product of sugar refining, for sugar in the fermentation of citric acid. Pfizer soon was producing other products by fermentation, most notably gluconic acid C 6 H 12 O 7 , used as an additive in food to regulate acidity and as a cleaning agent.

Unlike the case of citric acid, an important product that Pfizer sought to produce more efficiently, Pfizer succeeded in marketing gluconic acid only after developing a commercial process involving deep-tank fermentation. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the discovery of penicillin, the first naturally occurring antibiotic drug discovered and used therapeutically. It all started with a mold that developed on a staphylococcus culture plate.

Since then, the discovery of penicillin changed the course of medicine and has enabled physicians to treat formerly severe and life-threatening illnesses such as bacterial endocarditis, meningitis, pneumococcal pneumonia, gonorrhea and syphilis.

Sir Alexander Fleming, a Scottish researcher, is credited with the discovery of penicillin in At the time, Fleming was experimenting with the influenza virus in the Laboratory of the Inoculation Department at St. Often described as a careless lab technician, Fleming returned from a two-week vacation to find that a mold had developed on an accidentally contaminated staphylococcus culture plate. Upon examination of the mold, he noticed that the culture prevented the growth of staphylococci.

Even in the early experimentation stages, penicillin had no effect against gram-negative organisms but was effective against gram-positive bacteria. When I woke up just after dawn on Sept. But I guess that was exactly what I did.

Though Fleming stopped studying penicillin in , his research was continued and finished by Howard Flory and Ernst Chain, researchers at University of Oxford who are credited with the development of penicillin for use as a medicine in mice. Penicillin made a difference during the first half of the 20th century. The first patient was successfully treated for streptococcal septicemia in the United States in However, supply was limited and demand was high in the early days of penicillin.

They treat bacterial infections, not viruses. If used…. However, they might not be safe for every person that…. Extended-spectrum beta-lactamases are specific enzymes released by a bacteria that neutralizes the effects of antibiotics. These enzymes can…. How do penicillins work? Medically reviewed by Zara Risoldi Cochrane, Pharm. Quick facts Function History Resistance Side effects Risks Takeaway Penicillins are a group of antibacterial drugs that attack a wide range of bacteria.

Fast facts on penicillin. Share on Pinterest Penicillins work by bursting the cell wall of bacteria.

Side effects. Share on Pinterest Nausea is a common side effect of taking penicillins. Exposure to air pollutants may amplify risk for depression in healthy individuals. Costs associated with obesity may account for 3. Related Coverage. All you need to know about flu. 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.