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History of penicillin

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History of penicillin

The history of penicillin traces how observations of antibiotic activity in the mould Penicillium led to the development of penicillins, the first widely used antibiotics. Ancient societies used moulds to treat infections, and many people observed the inhibition of bacterial growth by moulds. While working at St Mary's Hospital in London in 1928, Scottish physician Alexander Fleming was the first to show experimentally that a Penicillium mould secretes an antibacterial substance, which he named "penicillin". The mould was found to be a variant of Penicillium chrysogenum (now called Penicillium rubens), a contaminant of a bacterial culture in his laboratory. The work on penicillin at St Mary's ended in 1929. In 1939, a team of scientists at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at the University of Oxford, led by Howard Florey that included Edward Abraham, Ernst Chain, Mary Ethel Florey, Norman Heatley and Margaret Jennings, began researching penicillin. They developed a method for cultivating the mould and extracting, purifying and storing penicillin from it, together with an assay for measuring its purity. "Penicillin" now became the name of the active ingredient in the mould juice. They carried out experiments on animals to determine penicillin's safety and effectiveness before conducting clinical trials and field tests. They derived penicillin's chemical formula and determined how it works. The private sector and the United States Department of Agriculture located and produced new strains and developed mass production techniques. During the Second World War penicillin became an important part of the Allied war effort, saving thousands of lives. Alexander Fleming, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery and development of penicillin. After the end of the war in 1945, penicillin became widely available. Dorothy Hodgkin determined its chemical structure, one of the achievements for which she received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964. This led to the development of semisynthetic penicillins that were more potent and effective against a wider range of bacteria. The drug was synthesised in 1957, but cultivation of mould remains the primary means of production. It was discovered that adding penicillin to animal feed increased weight gain, improved feed-conversion efficiency, promoted more uniform growth and facilitated disease control. Agriculture became a major user of penicillin. Shortly after their discovery of penicillin, the Oxford team reported penicillin resistance in many bacteria. Research that aims to circumvent and understand the mechanisms of antibiotic resistance continues today.

Tables

· Chemical analysis
2-Pentenylpenicillin
2-Pentenylpenicillin
UK nomenclature
Penicillin I
US nomenclature
Penicillin F
Chemical name
2-Pentenylpenicillin
Benzylpenicillin
Benzylpenicillin
UK nomenclature
Penicillin II
US nomenclature
Penicillin G
Chemical name
Benzylpenicillin
p-Hydroxybenzylpenicillin
p-Hydroxybenzylpenicillin
UK nomenclature
Penicillin III
US nomenclature
Penicillin X
Chemical name
p-Hydroxybenzylpenicillin
n-Heptylpenicillin
n-Heptylpenicillin
UK nomenclature
Penicillin IV
US nomenclature
Penicillin K
Chemical name
n-Heptylpenicillin
UK nomenclature
US nomenclature
Chemical name
Penicillin I
Penicillin F
2-Pentenylpenicillin
Penicillin II
Penicillin G
Benzylpenicillin
Penicillin III
Penicillin X
p-Hydroxybenzylpenicillin
Penicillin IV
Penicillin K
n-Heptylpenicillin

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