50 Fun Facts About Penicillin

Who discovered penicillin in 1928?

He was a Scottish physician working at St Mary's Hospital in London and found it as a crude extract of Penicillium rubens.

Penicillin was originally obtained from what kind of organism?

Eight species of Penicillium in the section Chrysogena produce it; most clinical penicillin comes from P. chrysogenum.

Penicillins belong to which class of antibiotics, named for a ring in their structure?

The four-membered ring is essential to the drug's activity and is fused to a five-membered thiazolidine ring.

On what date did Fleming first notice a mould killing his Staphylococcus culture?

He confirmed the observation on 28 September and published in 1929, coining the name to avoid saying 'mould broth filtrate'.

Fleming said he named penicillin on the same lines as which older drug, named after the foxglove?

The name simply says the substance came from a plant of the genus Penicillium.

What did Cecil George Paine treat in 1930 in the first successful clinical use of penicillin?

He treated ophthalmia neonatorum, a gonococcal infection, at the Royal Infirmary in Sheffield on 25 November 1930.

Which two scientists led the Oxford team that isolated purified penicillin in 1940?

They worked at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology; Florey was Australian and Chain a German-born refugee.

Who shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for penicillin?

Norman Heatley, who devised the extraction methods, was left out.

Albert Alexander, the first patient treated with the Oxford penicillin in 1941, was what by profession?

His severe face infection improved, but the supply of penicillin ran out and he died.

Which 1942 Boston disaster's survivors were the first burn patients treated with penicillin?

The December 1942 fire killed hundreds; penicillin helped keep infections at bay in those who survived.

Fleming's first cure with pure penicillin, in 1942, was of Harry Lambert, who had what?

Florey gave Fleming the only available sample; Lambert improved the next day and was cured within a week.

In June 1941 Florey and Heatley took their mould to which US facility to seek mass production?

The Department of Agriculture facility had the fermentation equipment Britain lacked in wartime.

Anne Miller's 1942 penicillin treatment used up what share of the total supply then in existence?

By June 1942 there was still only enough American penicillin to treat ten patients.

Where was the mould strain found in 1943 that yielded six times more penicillin than Fleming's?

It came after a worldwide search and transformed output.

What by-product of maize processing proved to be the ideal culture medium for growing penicillin mould?

Fermentation research on it at the Peoria laboratory unlocked wartime mass production.

How many doses of penicillin had the United States produced in time for the invasion of Normandy in 1944?

By June 1945 output had reached more than 646 billion units a year.

Which chemical engineer developed the deep-tank fermentation plant for large-scale production?

Pfizer scientist Jasper H. Kane had suggested the deep-tank method for pharmaceutical-grade penicillin.

G. Raymond Rettew made most of the world's penicillin by 1943 by pairing a cream separator with his knowledge of what?

During the war penicillin saved an estimated 12 to 15% of lives among Allied troops with infected wounds.

Why was urine collected from early penicillin patients?

About 80% of a dose leaves the body within three to four hours, and the drug was desperately scarce.

Which drug was found to slow penicillin's excretion by competing for the same kidney transporter?

It is still used for certain infections needing very high penicillin concentrations.

Why did Florey never patent penicillin?

Andrew Jackson Moyer patented methods for mass production in 1945 instead.

Which country was the first to make penicillin available for civilian use after the war?

In the US it reached the general public on 15 March 1945.

Who confirmed penicillin's chemical structure by X-ray crystallography in 1945?

She won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this and other structure determinations; Edward Abraham had proposed the structure in 1942.

Who completed the first chemical synthesis of penicillin, at MIT in 1957?

His route was not fit for mass production, but it opened the way to a whole family of new penicillins.

What is 6-APA, discovered at the Beecham laboratories in 1957?

Attaching different side chains to it produced a whole range of broader and tougher penicillins.

Which two natural penicillins became the standard clinical forms in the 1940s and 1950s?

One must be injected while the other can be swallowed.

Why can't penicillin G be taken by mouth?

It is given by injection instead, in doses as high as 2.4 g.

Fleming's original mould mainly produced which unstable penicillin, later named after him?

It is unstable and produced in tiny amounts, so commercial strains were switched to make penicillin G.

Adding phenoxyacetic acid to the culture medium makes the mould produce which penicillin instead of G?

That is how the oral penicillin, phenoxymethylpenicillin, is manufactured.

How does penicillin kill bacteria?

By binding penicillin-binding proteins it stops peptidoglycan cross-links forming, water floods in and the cell lyses.

Penicillin works by mimicking which part of the bacterial cell-wall building block?

The DD-transpeptidase enzyme grabs the beta-lactam ring instead and is knocked out.

Which type of bacteria is generally more susceptible to penicillin, and why?

Gram-negative bacteria have a lipid outer membrane that blocks water-soluble drugs, which must squeeze through porin channels.

What did Chain and Abraham call the penicillin-destroying enzyme they found in E. coli in 1940?

It was the first such enzyme identified; more than 2,000 types are now known.

What is described as 'the greatest threat to the usage of penicillins'?

Clavulanic acid, sulbactam and tazobactam are given alongside penicillins to disable these enzymes.

MRSA emerged after the introduction of which penicillin in 1959?

The strain makes a variant protein, PBP2a, that penicillins bind poorly, and resists most other antibiotics too.

What 1961 semi-synthetic penicillin was the first with a broader spectrum?

Broad-spectrum penicillins work against Gram-negative bugs such as E. coli and Salmonella typhi, though resistance is now common.

Which resistant Gram-negative bacterium prompted the development of carbenicillin, ticarcillin and piperacillin?

All the antipseudomonal penicillins must be injected; none works by mouth.

Roughly what share of the US population claims to be allergic to penicillin?

Because skin-test positivity fades about 10% a year with avoidance, some 90% of them can eventually tolerate it.

Roughly what proportion of patients suffer IgE-mediated anaphylaxis from penicillin?

A skin rash occurs in 1 to 10% of people, but true anaphylaxis is very rare.

Penicillin-allergic people usually tolerate cephalosporins because IgE cross-reactivity is only about what?

Cephalosporins are another beta-lactam family, so the low figure surprises many patients.

One unit of penicillin G sodium is defined as how much?

So 2 million units is 1.2 g; the unit dates from when impure batches varied in potency and had to be standardised.

The original 'Oxford unit' of 1941 was defined by inhibiting the growth of which bacterium?

The reference standard was a big batch of impure penicillin kept in Oxford; the later international standards were held at Mill Hill in London.

Penicillin has a short half-life. How often must it be dosed to keep adequate blood levels?

Early manuals recommended injections every three hours, likened to filling a bath with the plug out.

Penicillin blocking chloroplast division in mosses supports which idea about plastid evolution?

Chloroplasts descend from bacteria, and the primitive ones still divide bacterially enough for the drug to interfere.

Gram-positive bacteria stripped of their cell walls by penicillin are called what?

Gram-negative bacteria keep part of their wall and become spheroplasts.

Fleming's St Mary's Hospital laboratory was designated what in November 1999?

St Mary's Hospital Medical School merged into Imperial College in 1988.

Who patented methods for the mass production of penicillin in 1945?

Florey himself never patented the drug, on Sir Henry Dale's advice that it would be unethical.

Which Pfizer scientist suggested deep-tank fermentation for making pharmaceutical-grade penicillin?

Combined with the Peoria cantaloupe strain and corn steep liquor, it made large-scale production possible.

Roughly what share of a penicillin dose is cleared from the body within three to four hours?

That rapid renal clearance is why early patients' urine was collected to recover the scarce drug.

How many Penicillium species, all in section Chrysogena, produce penicillins?

Most clinical penicillins are made by P. chrysogenum in deep-tank fermentation; Fleming's own strain is now classed as P. rubens.