The doctor that paved the way for the invention of antibiotics: Alexander Fleming

Dr. Alexander Fleming at St. He is the person who discovered penicillin as a doctor at St. Mary's hospital. The Doctor, who was in a busy work pace, needed a vacation. Before he went on vacation, he had planted various molds in a part of his laboratory that was not exposed to the sun. Doctor Fleming was doing research on the antiseptic properties of these molds.

After his vacation commute, he returned to his lab and saw a difference in one of the molds. Subsequently, he intensified his studies on this mold and went down in history as the first person to find penicillin at the end of this whole process.

On this journey by examining molds, Dr. Alexander Fleming announced on February 13, 1929 that he had discovered penicillin. In particular, he cured sinus inflammation using penicillin. Penicillin, one of today's most important antibiotics, has been improved over the years and its side effects have been minimized.

Penicillin is a revolutionary development in the history of humanity and medicine. Sir Alexander Fleming not only found a very important drug by finding penicillin, but Fleming also went down in history as the person who found the first antibiotic in the history of the world with this invention.

What is an antibiotic?

Antibiotics are chemical substances that have the ability to inhibit or destroy the growth of various microorganisms. The age of antibiotics began when Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) discovered penicillin in 1928.

Louis Pasteur, in his work Fermentation of Lactic Acid (1857), mentioned the existence of some substances capable of showing antimicrobial effects. His experiments with the anthrax bacillus (1877) were the first clear demonstration of efficacy against bacteria.

But the true age of antibiotics began when Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928. According to Fleming, who published his article on his discovery in 1929, the substances secreted by the Penicillium notatum mold allowed the staphylococcal microbes to dissolve.

Alexander Fleming, Howard Florey, and Ernst Chain shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their achievements in their research on penicillin.

Alexander Fleming at St. During his work at St. Mary's Hospital, he saw streptococci grow in cultivars, leaving a gap around a green mold called penicillium. This meant that the mold was inhibiting the production of streptococci. Fleming explained the results of his observations and experiments on penicillin in his article titled “On the antibacterial action of cultures of a penicillium” published in The British Journal of Experimental Pathology (vol. X, June, p. 226-236) in 1929. Fleming continued his experiments, but he could not turn penicillin into a usable drug in bacterial diseases.

Ten years later, the pathology group led by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain of the University of Oxford restarted this study on penicillin. As a result of some experiments, the group succeeded in purifying the active substance called penicillin in 1939. They then tested this substance on rats. Of the lethal streptococcal-infected mice, those that were not given penicillin died within a few hours, while mice that were given penicillin all survived. Thus, the therapeutic properties of penicillin became definite.

Fleming was the bacteriologist who first noticed the antibacterial effect of penicillin. Florey and Chain were the ones who made penicillin a usable and effective therapeutic drug. But their contribution was soon forgotten, and only Fleming's name came to be mentioned in the discovery of penicillin.

Penicillin, which was first applied in the treatment of epidemic and infected diseases in 1941, was used extensively during the Second World War. In the first five months of 1943, 400 million units of penicillin were produced in the United States. Until the end of the Second World War, the monthly production of penicillin by US pharmaceutical companies was 650 million units. In the late 1940s, penicillin had become the main drug used in the treatment of many bacterial diseases, especially syphilis, pneumonia, and meningitis.

The discovery of penicillin also gave impetus to the search for other antibacterial agents. For example, streptomycin against tuberculosis bacillus was developed in 1943 and chloromycetin, which is effective against a broader spectrum of bacteria, was developed in 1947.

Selman Waksman, who works at Rutgers Agricultural College in New Jersey, developed methods for screening certain molds for antibiotic properties in 1940 with his graduate students. During these studies, Waksman's graduate student Albert Schatz discovered that a mold called Streptomyces griseus was an antagonist of tuberculosis bacteria. Schatz developed methods for producing large quantities of Streptomyces, and in 1943 he was able to isolate the tuberculosis bacteria inhibitory agent, streptomycin, from cultures. Schatz and Waksman, together with Elizabeth Bugie in 1944, published their articles containing observation results and information about their discoveries, “Streptomycin; They published it in the journal Proceeding of the Society for Experimental and Biological Medicine (no. 55, pp. 66-69) with the title “A Substance Exhibiting Antibiotic Activity Against Gram-Positive and Gram-Negative Bacteria”.

Streptomycin began to be used in the treatment of tuberculosis in 1945. Waksman received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1952 for this discovery. However, Albert Schatz and Elizabeth Bugie were not included in the award. (We see that the role of women scientists in the discovery of streptomycin, as in many other scientific discoveries, has been pushed into the background. For Elizabeth Bugie's contribution to the discovery of streptomycin, see). Streptomycin brought tuberculosis under control and made senatoriums unnecessary, leading to the disappearance of these treatment institutions.

The history of humanity cannot be separated from the great epidemics. The course of many historical processes and events has changed due to the consequences of epidemics and infected diseases. The number of people who died from epidemics is tens of times higher than the number of people who died in wars from ancient times to the present. Antibiotics, especially penicillin, have saved the lives of millions of people. Life expectancy today has doubled that of 150 years ago. This is mainly due to the introduction of antibiotics, as well as the development of tools and methods of anesthesia (1846) and antisepsis (1865), and of course the improvement of general well-being.

We can see the discovery of penicillin as a major social transformative beyond an important medical success story and thus the initiator of a new era.