PENICILLIN PRODUCTION (1941)

HEATLEY INITIATES THE MANUFACTURE OF PENICILIN

   Penicillin V potassium is an antibiotic used to treat certain infections caused by bacteria such as pneumonia, scarlet fever, and ear, skin. It also is used to prevent recurrent rheumatic fever and chorea. Antibiotics will not work for colds, flu, etc

  With World War II now underway, the group recognized penicillin’s enormous potential to treat war wounds. In 1941  Heatley traveled to the United States to start the commercial production of penicillin. Working with the team at northern regional research laboratory, Peoria, Illinois, he increased the yield of penicillin thirty-four times by adding a byproduct of cornstarch and lactose to the fermentation. by D-day in June 1944 enough penicillin available to allow unlimited treatment of allied troops.

   
In 1938, Howard Florey(1898-1968) and Ernst chain (1906-1979), two pathologists working at the university of oxford ,read a paper published nine years earlier about a substance called penicillin. its author, Alexander Fleming , recounted how spores of the mold Penicillium notatum had entered his bacterial culture dishes and killed some of the bacteria.  In 1945 Florey, chain and Fleming shared the noble prize .in his noble address Fleming presciently predicted the problem of antibiotic resistance, where bacteria would develop resistance to penicillin and the other antibiotic through their overuse.

  

   Florey and chain recognized the significance Fleming‘s observation and obtained the culture of the original mold. Initially they encountered difficulties in obtaining enough penicillin, but Norman Heatley(1911-2004), a biochemist on the team, devised ways of isolating penicillin without destroying it. Monitoring the extracted penicillin on mice infected penicillin survived, while untreated animal died.

     Alexander Fleming examining  petri dishes in his job at St.Mary’s  hospital, London, on December 18, 1943.