On Tuesday they met 87 years of the discovery of penicillin, by the British scientist Alexander Fleming was born in Scotland on August 6, 1881 and died in London on March 11, 1955.
During the month of September 1928, under the prevailing disorder in his laboratory, Fleming was conducting various experiments when on 22, to inspect before destroying their crops, he noted that the settlement of a fungus had grown spontaneously, as a contaminant, in a Petri plates seeded.
Fleming noted later the plates and found that the bacterial colonies that were about fungus (later identified as Penicillium notatum) were transparent due to bacterial lysis
To be more exact, Penicillium is a mold that produces a natural antibacterial substance: penicillin; meant death lysis of the bacteria, and, where appropriate, the pathogenic bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus) grown on the plate. Although he immediately recognized the significance of this finding his colleagues underestimated.
Fleming announced his discovery of penicillin in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology in 1929 and worked with the fungus for a time but the preparation and purification of penicillin from Penicillium notatum cultures were difficult and more suitable for the chemical. The scientific community believed that penicillin would only be useful for treating infections banal and therefore paid no attention.
Modern antibiotics born by methods Fleming
However, the antibiotic was of interest to US investigators during the Second World War, who were trying to emulate the German military medicine available which sulfa drugs. Chemical Ernst Boris Chain and Howard Florey developed in England a method of purification of penicillin allowing their synthesis and commercial distribution to the rest of the population.
For this reason, both researchers came to the United States to launch production plants dedicated exclusively to penicillin.
But Fleming patented his discovery not believe that it would be easier dissemination of necessary for the treatment of numerous infections that plagued the population antibiotic.
That is why, thanks to his discoveries, Fleming shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1945 with Ernst Boris Chain and Howard Florey.