How a Stray Mold Became Penicillin #Shorts
In September 1928, a mold contaminated a dish of bacteria in Alexander Fleming's lab, and medicine changed.
- At St Mary's Hospital in London, Fleming saw that Staphylococcus colonies near the mold were breaking apart. The mold made an antibacterial substance; he named it penicillin and published in 1929. (Fleming, Nobel Lecture, 1945; American Chemical Society)
- It was hard to purify. From 1938 to 1941, Howard Florey, Ernst Chain, Norman Heatley and colleagues at Oxford turned it into a usable drug; the first patient was treated on February 12, 1941. (Oxfordshire Blue Plaques; National WWII Museum)
- In World War II, 21 US companies produced 2.3 million doses in preparation for the D-Day invasion of Normandy. (National WWII Museum)
- Fleming, Florey and Chain shared the 1945 Nobel Prize. In his Nobel lecture, Fleming warned that underdosing could make microbes resistant: "If you use penicillin, use enough." (NobelPrize.org)