It is difficult for a modern person to imagine the field of medicine without antibiotics. With their help, they treat the most complex infectious diseases, save the lives of millions of people. It seems fantastic that the discovery of penicillin (the first antimicrobial agent) is an accidental phenomenon. At the beginning of the 20th century, the scientist Fleming found a fungus, which turned out to be completely harmless to humans, But disastrous For malicious microorganisms.
Even at school, we know various stories of the ancient world about the short and fast life of people. Those who lived to the age of 13 were considered long-livers, but their health was in a terrible state:
- the skin was covered with growths, ulcers;
- teeth rotted and fell out;
- internal organs worked with disorders due to poor nutrition and excessive physical exertion.
Infant deaths were rampant. The death of women after childbirth was considered commonplace. In the 16th century, a person's life expectancy was no more than 30 years, and even at the beginning of the 20th century, even a small cut could be fatal.
Before the invention of antibiotics, terrifying and painful methods were used to treat diseases.
- When infected, bloodletting was indicated (an incision was made in a large vessel or leeches were applied). The goal is to bring out the blood along with the causative agents of pathologies.
- Charcoal or bromine was poured over open wounds to draw out pus. The patient received a serious burn, but the bacteria also died.
- Mercury was used to treat syphilis. The substance was taken orally or injected into the urethra with thin rods. The only alternative was the even more dangerous arsenic.
History of the discovery of penicillin
The history of the discovery of penicillin, oddly enough, began with the great scientific and technological revolution. In the 19th-20th century, mankind mastered many new areas:
- connection and ;
- radio and entertainment;
- movement (cars and planes);
- began to appear global ideas for the development of the Earth and space.
But all scientific and technical achievements were crossed out by the life of people and the most difficult epidemiological situation. Hundreds of thousands of people continued to die en masse from typhus, dysentery, tuberculosis and pneumonia. Sepsis was a death sentence.
Background of the discovery of penicillin briefly in facts
Many scientists sought to find a solution to the problem and invent an effective cure for ailments. Experiments were carried out, the results of which were usually negative. The idea that microbes could be killed by special bacteria was introduced only in the 19th century.
- Louis Pasteur. He conducted studies that showed that under the influence of certain microorganisms, anthrax bacilli die.
- In 1871, Russian scientists Manassein and Polotebnov discovered the destructive effect of molds on bacteria. But their work was not given due attention.
- In 1867, the surgeon Lister established that bacteria cause inflammation and proposed to fight them with carbolic acid, the first recognized antiseptic.
- Ernest Duchesne. In his dissertation, he noted that in 1897 he successfully used mold against a number of bacteria that infect the human body.
- In 1984, Mechnikov used acidophilus bacteria from fermented milk products to treat intestinal disorders.
Who invented penicillin in Russia?
In the Soviet Union, the microbiologist Yermolyeva worked on the creation and research of antibiotic drugs. She was the first of all Soviet scientists to begin studying interferon as an antiviral drug. In 1942 Ermolyeva received penicillin.. The research and experiments of the scientist led to the fact that after a few years in the USSR, the antibiotic began to be produced in large quantities.
Who invented penicillin, Fleming's contribution
Scientist Alexander Fleming is credited with discovering the antibiotic penicillin. For his discovery, the researcher received the Nobel Prize in 1945. The antibiotic appeared by accident: Fleming was sloppy and often did not clean up the test tubes. Before a long absence, the scientist forgot to wash the Petri dishes, in which there were staphylococcus colonies.
Upon arrival, the scientist discovered that mold had bloomed in the cups, and some areas were completely free of bacteria. Fleming came to the conclusion that the mold produces substances that kill staphylococci. The bacteriologist isolated penicillin from fungi, but was skeptical about his discovery.
Later, scientists Flory and Cheyne completed the work they had begun. After 10 years, they improved the drug and brought out a pure form of penicillin.
In 1942, penicillin began to be used to treat people. The first patient to recover was a child with blood poisoning. During the Second World War, the manufacture of penicillin in the United States was put on the conveyor. Thanks to this, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were saved from gangrene and amputation of limbs.
How does penicillin work?
The principle of the antibiotic is that it stops or stops the chemical reaction that is needed to maintain the life of the bacterium. Penicillin stops the activity of molecules involved in the production of new bacterial cell layers. The antibiotic does not affect humans or animals, as the outer shells of human cells are significantly different from bacterial cells.
Mechanism and features of action.
- Penicillin molecules include bactericidal properties: they have a detrimental effect on a variety of bacteria.
- The main object of action is penicillin-binding proteins. These are enzymes of the final part of the bacterial cell wall synthesis.
- When the drug begins to stop the synthesis, a process begins that leads to the complete death of the bacterium.
Microbes eventually learned to defend themselves: they began to isolate a special component that destroys the antibiotic. But thanks to the work of scientists, improved drugs began to appear that contain inhibitors. Such antibiotics are called penicillin-protected.
The impact of the discovery on our day
Mankind has gone through a rather complicated and confusing path of its development. Many important discoveries and major inventions were made in various fields of activity. The large-scale and decisive discoveries that revolutionized medicine include the creation of penicillin.
Penicillin has been used worldwide since 1952. Due to its unique properties, it began to be used to treat various pathologies:
- osteomyelitis;
- syphilis;
- pneumonia;
- fever during childbirth;
- infection after wounds or burns.
Later, a variety of antibacterial drugs were isolated. Antibiotics began to be considered a cure for all diseases for many years. Due to the invention of the antibiotic, the fight against serious infectious diseases has improved, and the life of people has extended by 35 years.
September 3 is the official discovery day of penicillin worldwide. For all the time of the existence of mankind, no other medicine has been invented that would save so many human lives.
Penicillium chrysogenium (notatum) is a member of the genus Penicillium. "Record holder" for the production of penicillin
The very idea of using other microorganisms (or what they synthesize) to fight microorganisms has been around in medicine for a very long time.
In the microbial community itself, some microbes constantly suppress others and are in such a dynamic balance.
As early as 1897, long before the discovery of penicillin, Ernest Duchene used mold in an experiment to treat typhus in guinea pigs.
Penicillium roqueforti - "noble mold". Used to make Roquefort cheese and gives it a distinctive flavor
What do you think guinea pigs, blue cheese and tap water have in common?
The question is rather complicated. It would seem: nothing in common. But if you were a French medical student of the late 19th century, then these subjects would be your scientific reagents.
These reagents were used by the brilliant Ernest Duchen to discover antibiotics, almost 35 years before Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin.
So the history of anti-bitics did not begin with Fleming, no. Fleming was not the first to notice the antibacterial properties of mold. Mold was used to heal wounds by the ancient Egyptians. And, although in ancient Egypt there was no scientific support for many medical actions, one should not forget about the remarkable powers of observation of the ancient healers.
Ernest Duchen
It was he who first described the antibacterial properties of penicillin. Very little is known about his life. Born in Paris, he studied at the military medical school in Lyon, where he entered at the age of twenty.
Duchenne was simply fascinated by microbes. Still would! The discovery of pathogenic properties in microbes, the works of Louis Pasteur, simply turned the worldview of physicians of that time. Ernest Duchen decided to write his dissertation under the guidance of Professor of Microbiology Gabriel Roux. Gabriel Roux was then in charge of the laboratory responsible for the quality of the water supply in Lyon. Duchenne's dissertation was devoted to the following observation: tap water never got moldy, but mold could grow well in distilled water. The first suggestion was that bacteria prevent mold from growing in tap water.
Ernest grew Penicillum glaucum. This mold is used to make Gorgonzola and Stilton cheeses. He placed it in containers with tap and boiled water. Then he added typhoid fever and E. coli - the mold quickly died. It turned out that the bacteria in the water kill the mold. Duchenne began to set different conditions: temperature, acidity of the environment, but the mold did not always die. Sometimes the fungus won.
Again, the question arose: can mold somehow “respond” to bacteria? Can she fight them? In an experiment on guinea pigs, a decrease in the virulence of bacteria was found. Moreover, by injecting the mold, Duchene was able to cure the animal. A similar experiment will be conducted by Alexander Fleming, who is often called the discoverer of penicillin.
Much has been written about how Fleming discovered penicillin. So why is Duchenne not remembered as the discoverer of penicillin? There are several reasons for this. Well, first of all, he was researching Penicillum glausum, as opposed to another type of mold, Penicillum notanum. Mold, which actually synthesizes this penicillin. Later it was found that Penicillum glausum produces another, weaker antibiotic - patulin (by the way, it is toxic and works in high concentrations, therefore it is not used). Probably, if it were not for the health of the young scientist, as well as a short life path (he died of tuberculosis in 1912, having lost his wife long before that from the same tuberculosis), the discovery of penicillin would have belonged to him.
Alexander Fleming
But a fact is a fact. Alexander Fleming was the inventor and discoverer of penicillin. The date of discovery of the most famous antibiotic is September 3, 1928 (Birthday of penicillin). Fleming by that time was already widely known, had a reputation as a brilliant researcher.
Mankind still owes the discovery of penicillin to this Scottish biochemist. After the First World War, in which the "father of penicillin" served as a military doctor, Fleming could not accept the fact that a large number of soldiers died from infectious complications. In 1918 he returned from the war to work in the bacteriological laboratory of St. Mary's Hospital, where he had worked before (and where he would work until his death). In 1922, an incident occurred that, of course, looked more like a fable, but nevertheless, six years ahead of the discovery of penicillin. Fleming, who had a cold, accidentally sneezed on a Petri dish where there were bacterial colonies. A few days later he found stunted growth of bacteria (Micrococcus lysodeikticus) in some places. This is how lysozyme (muramidase) was discovered. This hydrolytic enzyme breaks down the walls of bacteria, that is, it has bactericidal properties. A lot of it in the secretions of nasal mucus, saliva (why animals can lick their wounds), lacrimal fluid. There is a lot of it in breast milk (moreover, it is noticeably more than in cow's milk and when feeding, its concentration does not decrease over time, but increases). Of course, when penicillin is discovered, interest in lysozyme will noticeably drop, until the discovery of chicken protein lysozyme.
As Alexander Fleming himself later noted, chance helped the discovery of penicillin. Working in the laboratory and studying the enzyme lysozyme, Fleming did not differ in order in the workplace (although scientists have their own order!). As is often the case with geniuses (remember at least Einstein's desktop), the scientist's laboratory was a real mess. Fleming, returning after a month of absence, noticed that mold fungi had appeared on one cup with staphylococcus cultures. The fungal colony dissolved the inoculated culture. The mold belonged to the genus Penicillaceae, which is why the isolated substance was later called penicillin.
The name penicillin is translated as "writing brush", a similar similarity is visible under a microscope.
Howard Flory
And although Alexander Fleming is remembered when it comes to the discovery of penicillin, other scientists, in particular the pharmacologist Govrad Walter Flory, have taken practical advantage of this discovery. In 1938, Florey, working with Ernest Cheyne and Norman Heatley at the University of Oxford, England, began experimenting with the antibacterial properties of the fungus Penicillium notatum. Fleming wrote about the properties of the fungus to suppress bacterial growth in his writings.
The first patient to be prescribed penicillin was Albert Alexander, a London policeman. A serious infection that affected part of the face, the periorbital region of the eye, the scalp, began with a small prick of a rose thorn. Flory and Cheyne gave the patient penicillin, and during the first day there was a good trend. However, it was not possible to determine the optimal dose of the drug (it was not known even then) and the infectious process nevertheless led to the death of the patient. The experiments continued, the drug was administered to seriously ill children with impressive effects. It is now believed that the work of Flory and Cheyne saved more than 80 million people.
Ernest Chain
And now it is worth saying about the previously mentioned biochemist Ernest Boris Cheyne. Born into a Jewish family and living in Germany, he was forced to emigrate to England when Hitler came to power. As co-recipient of the future Nobel Prize for the discovery of penicillin, Cheyne was for that part of the work in which he showed the structure of penicillin and successfully isolated the active substance. To isolate penicillin, for one therapeutic dose, it was necessary to process about 500 liters of nutrient broth with mold!
Cheyne wrote: “The difficulties Fleming encountered only spurred my interest in Fleming's discovery of penicillin. I told Flory that we would find a way to at least partially purify penicillin, despite its instability.
In 1938, Cheyne and his colleague Norman Heatley quickly came to the conclusion that penicillin, unlike lysozyme, is not an enzyme, but a small molecule of organic origin.
The small size of the molecule has encouraged researchers: it will be easy to decipher the molecular structure and synthesize it. The fact that it will be easy, scientists were wrong ...
It was found that the composition of penicillin includes a complex of structures, which were later called beta-lactams. 
Cheyne suggested the possibility of the existence of such a structure earlier, but the issue was resolved only in 1949.
When, using X-ray crystallography, Dorothy Hodgkin determined the arrangement of atoms in the crystal lattice of penicillin. It was after 1949, after determining the exact molecular structure of penicillin, that it became possible to mass-produce the drug cheaply.
By the way, Dorothy Hodgkin also received the Nobel Prize for the study of the crystal lattice in x-rays, in 1964. This outstanding woman laid the foundations of the method by which it became possible to study the structure of DNA (the program "Human Genome").
Cheyne and Flory used a new lyophilization technique to obtain penicillin in a concentrated form. The penicillin solution was frozen, and then, at low temperature and low pressure, the water was expelled, leaving valuable material.
Penicillium chrysogenium (notatum): how they found the most "penicillin" fungus
Since the beginning of World War II, the need for penicillin has increased dramatically. The need for such a drug was obvious.
In 1940, a group of scientists at Oxford University (led by Flory and Chain) took Fleming's penicillin out of stock and began to look for ways to produce it in large quantities.
Since the bombing of London began and the risk of occupation arose, the scientists went to negotiate in New York (the probability of the German landing was so great that Cheyne even soaked his jacket with healing mold, explaining to his colleagues: in which case, save this jacket first of all).
In New York, the arriving scientists were greeted without much enthusiasm: the production of penicillin rarely exceeded 4 action units per 1 milliliter of nutrient medium. This is very little: on a bottle of penicillin, for example, it says "1,000,000 units." For one dose of the drug, 250 liters of broth had to be processed.
The goal was immediately outlined: to find the most “yielding” fungus. First, the scientists went to Peoria (Illinois), where there was a research laboratory for studying the metabolism of mold. Laboratory staff amassed a significant collection, but only a few mold strains could produce penicillin.
We began to connect friends: to send samples of soil, mold grains, fruits and vegetables. They hired one woman to go around shops, bakeries, cheese dairies, looking for new samples of blue-green mold. Her name was Miss Mary Hunt, nicknamed "Moldy Mary" for her good work.
The course of history was changed by the cantatula melon, on which a blue-green fungus settled. This mold produced 250 units of penicillin per milliliter of growth medium. One of the strains that mutated from it began to produce 50,000 units! All penicillin-producing strains today are descendants of the same mold that was found in 1943. It was the fungus Penicillium chrysogenium, formerly known as Penicillium notatum.
From that moment, the era of industrial production of penicillin began.
When Fleming, Florey and Chain were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945, Fleming said: “They say I invented penicillin. But man could not invent it - this substance was created by nature. I didn't invent penicillin, I just drew people's attention to it and gave it a name.".
Fleming, Cheyne and Flory at the Nobel Prize
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TASS-DOSIER / Yulia Kovaleva /. 75 years ago, on February 12, 1941, in London, British scientists Howard Florey and Ernst Cheyne first used penicillin to treat humans. The editors of TASS-DOSIER have prepared material on the history of the discovery of this drug.
Penicillin is an antibiotic with broad antimicrobial activity. It is the first effective medicine against many serious diseases, in particular, syphilis and gangrene, as well as infections caused by staphylococci and streptococci. It is obtained from certain types of fungus of the genus Penicillium (Latin penicillus - "brush"; under a microscope, spore-bearing mold cells look like a brush).
Discovery history
Mentions of the use of mold for medicinal purposes are found in the writings of the Persian scientist Avicenna (II century) and the Swiss physician and philosopher Paracelsus (XIV century). The Bolivian ethnobotanist Enrique Oblitas Poblete in 1963 described the use of mold by Indian healers in the Inca era (XV-XVI centuries).
In 1896, the Italian physician Bartolomeo Gosio, studying the causes of mold damage to rice, developed an antibiotic formula similar to penicillin. Due to the fact that he could not offer a practical application of a new drug, his discovery was forgotten. In 1897, French military doctor Ernest Duchen noticed that Arab grooms collected mold from damp saddles and treated the wounds of horses with it. Duchen carefully examined the mold, tested it on guinea pigs and found its destructive effect on the typhoid bacillus. Ernest Duchen presented the results of his research at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, but they were also not recognized. In 1913, American scientists Carl Alsberg and Otis Fisher Black succeeded in obtaining an acid with antimicrobial properties from mold, but their research was interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War.
In 1928, British scientist Alexander Fleming conducted an ordinary experiment in the course of studying the resistance of the human body to bacterial infections. He found that some colonies of staphylococcal cultures he left in laboratory dishes were infected with a strain of the mold Penicillium Notatum. Around the mold spots, Fleming noticed an area that was free of bacteria. This allowed him to conclude that the mold produces a bacteria-killing substance that the scientist called "penicillin".
Fleming underestimated his discovery, believing it would be very difficult to obtain a cure. His work was continued by Oxford scientists Howard Florey and Ernst Chain. In 1940, they isolated the drug in its pure form and studied its therapeutic properties. On February 12, 1941, an injection of penicillin was given to a human for the first time. Flory and Cheyne's patient was a London policeman who was dying of blood poisoning. After several injections, he felt better, but the supply of medicine quickly ran out, and the patient died. In 1943, Howard Flory transferred the technology for obtaining a new drug to American scientists, and mass production of the antibiotic was launched in the USA. In 1945, Alexander Fleming, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
In the 1870s mold was studied by doctors Alexei Polotebnov and Vyacheslav Manassein, who found that it blocks the growth of other microorganisms. Polotebnov recommended using these features of mold in medicine, in particular, for the treatment of skin diseases. But the idea didn't catch on.
In the USSR, microbiologists Zinaida Ermolyeva and Tamara Balezina received the first samples of penicillin. In 1942, they discovered a penicillin-producing strain of Penicillium Crustosum. During the trials, the drug showed much greater activity than its English and American counterparts. However, the resulting antibiotic lost its properties during storage and caused an increase in temperature in patients.
In 1945, tests of penicillin developed according to the Western model began in the Soviet Union. The technology of its production was mastered by the Research Institute of Epidemiology and Hygiene of the Red Army under the leadership of Nikolai Kopylov.
Confession
Mass production of penicillin was established during World War II. According to some estimates, thanks to this antibiotic, about 200 million people were saved during the war years and after it. The discovery of this drug has been repeatedly recognized as one of the most important scientific achievements in the history of mankind. Most modern antibiotics were created precisely after the study of the medicinal properties of penicillin.
Humanity has passed a difficult and thorny path along the path of its development. Over the past millennia, thousands of great discoveries and outstanding inventions have been made in various areas of human life. One of these greatest discoveries, which made a real revolution in medicine, was invention of penicillin the world's first antibiotic. At the beginning of the 20th century, mankind has completely mastered such inventions as the telegraph, telephone, radio, automobile, airplane, and dreams of space exploration. And along with this, thousands of people around the world continued to die from typhus, dysentery, pneumonic plague and even pneumonia, and sepsis became a death sentence. The idea of fighting microbes with the help of microbes themselves was put forward in the 19th century. So, as a result of the research carried out by Louis Pasteur, it was found that anthrax bacilli die under the influence of certain microbes. A recently discovered dissertation by medical student Ernest Duchesne indicates that as early as 1897 he used mold (the penicillin contained there) to fight bacteria that infect the human body. He performed his experiments on guinea pigs for the treatment of typhus. Unfortunately, the opening was not completed due to the sudden death of E. Duchesne.
Officially, the British bacteriologist Alexander Fleming is considered the inventor of the first antibiotic (penicillin), and the date of its discovery is September 3, 1928. While studying staphylococci, the scientist noticed that after a month, mold fungi formed on one of the plates with cultures, 
destroying the colonies of staphylococci placed there earlier. The mushrooms grown on a plate with staphylococci, Fleming attributed to the genus Penicillaceae, the isolated substance was called penicillin. Further studies have shown that in addition to staphylococcus, penicillin also affects pathogens that cause scarlet fever, diphtheria, pneumonia and meningitis. Unfortunately, against paratyphoid and typhoid fever, the remedy he had isolated turned out to be powerless. In 1929, the scientist published a report on his discovery in the English Journal of Experimental Pathology. Further studies showed that the production of penicillin is slow, the scientist could not purify and extract the active substance. Until 1939, Fleming failed to develop an effective culture, the new drug was very unstable. Fleming worked on its improvement until 1942.
In 1940, the biochemist E.B. actively tried to purify and isolate penicillin. Chain and bacteriologist H.W. Flory, already in 1941, enough penicillin was accumulated for an effective dose. A 15-year-old with blood poisoning was the first to be saved thanks to the antibiotic he received. For the discovery of penicillin, E. Chain, A. Fleming and W. X. Flory received the Nobel Prize for three in 1945. All three refused patents for the invention of penicillin, believing that a tool that could save humanity should not become a source of profit. This is the only time that no one has ever claimed copyright for an invention of this magnitude. Thanks to penicillin and the victory over dangerous infectious diseases, medicine has managed to extend a person's life by 30-35 years.
During the Second World War, the production of penicillin on an industrial scale was established in the United States, which saved the lives of tens of thousands of wounded soldiers. After the war, the antibiotic production method improved significantly, 
since 1952 it has found practical application on a global scale. With the help of penicillin, such previously fatal diseases as osteomyelitis, syphilis, pneumonia, puerperal fever were cured, the development of infections after injuries and burns was excluded. Antibacterial drugs were soon isolated. Antibiotics have become a panacea for all diseases for several decades. In the Soviet Union, a great merit in the creation of a number of antibiotics belongs to the outstanding microbiologist ZV Ermolyeva. She is the first Russian scientist to investigate interferon as an antiviral agent. According to Professor W. X. Flory himself, penicillin, which Z. V. Ermolyeva received, was 1.4 times more effective than the Anglo-American. The first portions of penicillin were obtained by Yermolyeva in 1942. Soon, thanks to her, the mass production of the Soviet antibiotic was established.
How many accidents led to the discovery of one of the most effective drugs of the 20th century and how the laboratory window and the wall of the bomb shelter helped it, read in the History of Science section.
On September 13, 1929, the Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming at a meeting of the Medical Research Club at St. Mary University of London first announced that he had discovered the first antibiotic - penicillin. Subsequently, it was recognized that penicillin was one of the greatest medical discoveries of the twentieth century, and this century was already very rich in discoveries in medicine. Be that as it may, in 1945 Fleming became one of the Nobel Prize winners, awarded specifically for the discovery of penicillin.
In his Nobel speech, Fleming then stated: “They say that I invented penicillin. But no man could invent it, because this substance was created by nature. I didn't invent penicillin, I just drew people's attention to it and gave it a name." In fact, the situation with penicillin is even more interesting: it seems that nature had to work hard and arrange a whole network of accidents to force people, primarily Fleming himself, to discover this substance.
To begin with, Fleming became a doctor partly by chance. Considering the whole range of his talents, our hero could well choose another scientific direction, even take up art (from childhood he was fond of painting) or become a military man. On the advice of his older brother, he chose medicine and applied for a national competition to enter medical school at St. Mary. After achieving perfect scores in the exam and becoming a surgeon upon graduation, Fleming was associated with this hospital for the rest of his life.
Alexander Fleming
Imperial War Museums/Wikimedia Commons
He went to work in the wound research laboratory and showed his talents as a researcher by showing that carbolic acid, then widely used for the treatment of open wounds, was not suitable as an antiseptic. The fact is that it kills the leukocytes that create a protective barrier in the body and ultimately contributes to the survival of pathogenic bacteria in the tissues.
The next accident happened to Fleming in 1922, when he discovered an enzyme later named lysozyme. This enzyme killed some bacteria without harming healthy tissue. The accident here was that the scientist was not very neat and did not really like to put his laboratory table in order. Once, when he had a cold, he sneezed into a Petri dish where he grew bacteria in a nutrient medium and did not disinfect it, as required by the rules. A few days later, by the color of the residue in this cup, he found that in places where his saliva had fallen, the bacteria had been destroyed.
A fungus containing penicillin
Wikimedia Commons
True, lysozyme did not work very well as an antiseptic: it acted very slowly on most bacteria, so Fleming at first began to use lysozyme when writing avant-garde paintings, where different colors on the canvas were created by different bacteria. To prevent these bacteria from crawling from one color spot to another, he treated the borders of such spots with lysozyme.
However, in the laboratory, Fleming thought more about finding a good antiseptic than about his painting. And in 1928, history repeated itself with his inaccuracy. By some miracle, one of his non-disinfected Petri dishes, where he was seeding a colony of Staphylococcus aureus, got a mold from a neighboring laboratory - a rather rare mold fungus Penicillium notatum. After a couple of days, she dissolved the sown culture, and where it fell into the cup, instead of a yellow cloudy mass, drops similar to dew were seen.
Here Fleming had an epiphany: he suggested that a mold fungus had a deadly effect on bacteria. This assumption was confirmed, and the scientist obtained an intense yellow substance from this fungus, which he called penicillin.
It was found that even diluted 500-800 times penicillin inhibited the growth of not only staphylococci, but also streptococci, pneumococci, gonococci, diphtheria bacillus and anthrax bacilli, but did not act on Escherichia coli, typhoid bacillus and pathogens of influenza, paratyphoid, cholera. An extremely important discovery was the absence of a harmful effect of penicillin on human leukocytes, even at doses many times higher than the dose that is fatal to staphylococci. This meant that penicillin was harmless to humans.
Fleming spent about a year studying the properties of the substance he discovered, and although he was unable to obtain it in its pure form, he nevertheless decided to tell his colleagues about it.
Fleming's penicillin became a real antibiotic much later, after his research in 1938 was continued by Oxford University professor, pathologist and biochemist Howard Flory and chemist Ernst Boris Chain, who emigrated from Germany after the Nazis came to power. After a year of attempts, scientists managed to do what Fleming failed to do - to get the first 100 milligrams of pure penicillin. However, the fungus from which penicillin was obtained turned out to be too capricious, it was necessary to find a more “obedient” and effective replacement for it.
Howard Flory and Ernst Boris Chain
Wikimedia Commons
For this purpose, Cheyne attracted other specialists to work: bacteriologists, chemists and doctors. The so-called Oxford Group was formed. The work of the group was successful, and in 1941, penicillin for the first time saved a person with blood poisoning from certain death - he became a 15-year-old teenager.
The war that had flared up by that time did not allow mass production of penicillin in England, and in the summer of 1941 the Oxford group went to improve the technology in the United States. On the extract of American corn, the yield of penicillin increased 20 times. Then we decided to look for new strains of mold, more productive than Penicillium notatum, once flown in through Fleming's window. The group's lab began to receive mold samples from all over the world. The group was also supplemented by Mary Hunt, who was soon nicknamed "Moldy Mary" because she bought all the moldy products in the market. It so happened that it was she who brought a rotten melon from the market, in which the highly productive strain that scientists were looking for was found - P. Chrysogenum.
Based on this strain, a technology for the mass production of penicillin was developed. In 1945, the production of this medicine reached 15 tons per year, and in 1950 - 150 tons.
The mechanism of action of penicillins turned out to be very complex, and only in 1957 was it clarified by the American researcher James Park, who discovered a nucleotide that inhibits the growth of the cell wall of many microbes.
Model of the chemical structure of penicillin
Wikimedia Commons
Further research showed the main drawback of penicillins: pathogens quickly got used to their presence. So, if in 1945 gonorrhea was completely cured with a single injection of penicillin in 300 thousand units, then in the early seventies this required a course of ten times more powerful injections. As of 1998, 78% of gonococci have developed resistance to antibiotics of the penicillin group. For this reason, any antibiotic has been and remains the main medicine of the 20th century. In the 21st century, scientists are facing the challenge of creating a new drug that microbes will no longer be able to get used to.
The fate of the birth of penicillin in the USSR is curious. In 1941, intelligence received information that a miraculous antimicrobial drug was being created in England based on some type of mold. Immediately, we began work in this direction, and already in 1942, the microbiologist Zinaida Ermolyeva obtained penicillin from mold Penicillium crustosum taken from the wall of one of the bomb shelters in Moscow. In 1944, the drug was successfully tested on wounded soldiers.
Zinaida Ermolyeva
Wikimedia Commons
However, Soviet penicillin, for all the significance of this result, was imperfect and could not be produced in the quantities necessary for the front. In addition, patients because of it greatly increased the temperature, while Western penicillin did not cause any side effects. It was not possible to buy mass production technologies for this “medicine of the century” in the United States, since overseas there was a ban on the sale of any technologies related to penicillin.
The situation was then saved by Ernst Chain, who was the author of the English patent for penicillin. He offered his help to the Soviet Union, and in 1948, with his help, our scientists managed to develop the necessary technology, according to which one of the Moscow pharmaceutical plants immediately began to produce medicine.
In 1945 Alexander Fleming, Howard Flory and Ernst Boris Chain were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. In the Nobel Lecture, Fleming noted that "the phenomenal success of penicillin has led to intense study of the antibacterial properties of molds and other lower members of the plant kingdom. Only a few of them have such properties.
In the remaining ten years of his life, the scientist was awarded 25 honorary degrees, 26 medals, 18 prizes, 30 awards and honorary membership in 89 academies of sciences and scientific societies.
On March 11, 1955, Fleming died of a myocardial infarction. He was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral in London - next to the most revered Britons. In Greece, where the scientist visited, national mourning was declared on the day of his death. And in Barcelona, Spain, all the flower girls of the city poured out bunches of flowers from their baskets to a memorial plaque with the name of the great bacteriologist and doctor.
