A looming penicillin shortage threatens pregnant adults with syphilis and their newborns

Pfizer announced last week that it expects to run out of a key drug for treating syphilis in the near future — a looming problem that health professionals say could exacerbate syphilis rates, widen racial disparities in sexually transmitted diseases, and stymie global access to the antibiotic, especially within lower-income countries. The drug in question is Bicillin, an injectable, long-acting form of penicillin most commonly used to treat syphilis in adults as well as childhood infections. In a letter to customers last week, Pfizer estimated that the supply for kids may run out as early as the end of the month, while supply for adults could deplete in September.

 Waiting for the Penicillin Moment: my new feature on antiviral drugs for Wired

Penicillin saved countless lives, killing off a wide range of pathogens while causing few side effects. Fleming’s work also led other scientists to discover more antibiotics, which collectively changed the rules of medicine. Now doctors could prescribe drugs that effectively wiped out most bacteria, without even knowing what kind of bacteria was making their patients sick.

Someone paid $15,000 for a chunk of mold and honestly what a steal

It probably saved your life. See, back in 1928 a Scottish bacteriologist named Alexander Fleming discovered that a certain kind of fungus naturally produced an antibiotic—a bacteria killer. That antibiotic was penicillin (or at least it would become penicillin later, when two other scientists figured out how to stabilize the medicine and mass produce it). Fleming published his findings in 1929 and tried to get the scientific world to pay attention to this new “mould juice,” as he so lovingly called it (yum). But it wasn’t until the 1940s that penicillin really took off as a medication, just in time for it to be mass produced at the end of World War II and years after Fleming himself gave up on it.

How World War II put penicillin into every pharmacy

An urgent drive to develop infection-fighting drugs for the wounded led to the mass production of the first effective antibiotic.

Myth about how science progresses is built on a misreading of the story of penicillin

Finally, the myth concentrates on individuals, in particular Fleming. While his contribution was vital, that of Florey and Chain was equally important. The contribution of Norman Heatley was key to the biochemical isolation. Countless other scientists and industrialists were involved. Edward Mellanby, the secretary of the Medical Research Council, saw the potential and sorted much of the funding. Patients, doctors, nurses and technicians, including the “penicillin girls” who prepared the penicillin, all played their role. Science is a shared enterprise. Myths are important, but sometimes it is useful to look behind them to understand how science really works.

Penicillin Comes Of Age In 'A Fierce Radiance'

It's common knowledge that Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928. A lucky wind blew a few spores into his Petri dish, and the rest is history. That's true as far as it goes, author Lauren Belfer says, but what people forget is that Fleming couldn't do much with his miraculous discovery because penicillin was so tough to produce. It lay dormant until the outbreak of World War II, and in the meantime, people continued to die from causes as tiny as a scratch on the knee. Belfer's new novel, A Fierce Radiance, picks up the story of penicillin just after the outbreak of the war, when pharmaceutical companies were racing to perfect mass-production of the drug.

Penicillin: the Oxford story

He soon set about recruiting a research team and – by the early war years – Florey, Ernst Chain and others had turned over the department to making penicillin and demonstrating how effective it could be against bacterial infections. Penicillin then seemed nothing short of miraculous, banishing many infectious diseases that were some of the leading killers of the time. Indeed the work of the Oxford team ushered in the modern age of antibiotics.

The real story behind penicillin

The discovery of penicillin, one of the world’s first antibiotics, marks a true turning point in human history — when doctors finally had a tool that could completely cure their patients of deadly infectious diseases.

Did Penicillin Cause the Sexual Revolution?

Ask most people to account for the sexual revolution of the 1960s and they will likely say something about improved access to birth control (as well as improved access to Jefferson Airplane and shrooms). But Andrew Francis, an economist at Emory University, wants to give a little credit to penicillin, too.

Fleming's discovery of penicillin couldn't get published today. That's a huge problem

Rajendran notes that Alexander Fleming’s simple observation that penicillin mold seemed to kill off bacteria in his petri dish could never be published today, even though it led to the discovery of lifesaving antibiotics. That's because today's journals want lots of data and positive results that fit into an overarching narrative (what Rajendran calls "storytelling") before they'll publish a given study.

How Being a Slob Helped Alexander Fleming Discover Penicillin

The bacteriologist Alexander Fleming is recalled as one of the brightest minds in the history of science. TIME once called him “a short (5 ft. 7 in.), gentle, retiring Scot with somewhat dreamy blue eyes, fierce white hair and a mulling mind, which, when it moves, moves with the thrust of a cobra.” But he owed some of his greatest discoveries, at least in part, to his disgusting habits. It was a tendency toward slovenliness, after all, that famously led him to stumble upon the antibiotic properties of penicillin on this day, Sept. 28, in 1928.

Painting With Penicillin: Alexander Fleming’s Germ Art

The scientist created works of art using microbes, but did his artwork help lead him to his greatest discovery?

Penicillin Took a Long Time to Get to Market

I wondered why penicillin was branded a new drug for me in 1948 if it was first discovered in 1928. Now I realize discovery is only 50% of the battle won. The other 50% is getting it to market.

Penicillin was discovered 90 years ago – and despite resistance, the future looks good for antibiotics

Discovered in September 1928 by Alexander Fleming, it was first used as a cure when George Paine treated eye infections with it in 1930. A method for mass production was devised by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain in 1940, and it was first mass produced in 1942, with half of that total supply used for one patient being treated for streptococcal septicaemia. In 1944, 2.3m doses were produced in time for the Normandy landings of World War II. And it was then that the miracle of penicillin became clear. Soldiers who had previously died from septicaemia were surviving.

Penicillin's Unfolding Drama; New discoveries about the miracle drug that opened the antibiotics age extend its usefulness.

THIS year, thanks to man's incessant probing into some of nature's most complex secrets, we stand at the threshold of another great triumph over our oldest and deadliest foe — the disease microbe. The first — the discovery of penicillin's curative powers — opened the way into the antibiotics age; now scientists have found means of creating countless variations of man-made penicillin, with potentials of healing far beyond the range of present-day antibiotics.

Penicillin, 1940

Then, in 1928, either by experiment or by accident (the historical record is unclear), Fleming found an antibiotic in a mold called penicillium notatum. He called the substance penicillin and published a paper on it in 1929 in the now defunct British Journal of Experimental Pathology. The Times took no note of it.

Penicillin, Plasma Fractionation and the Physician

Fleming, one day, permitted the open dishes on which he was growing colonies of bacteria to remain uncovered before an open window. Air-borne fungus spores settled on the dishes, and within a few hours spots of fungus mold began growing side by side with the bacterial colonies. Instead of casting the contaminated cultures aside he took note of the fact that individual colonies of bacteria adjacent to the mold growth had ceased to develop — in fact their growth had been actively inhibited. Obviously, therefore, the mold sent forth into the culture medium something inimical to the life of the bacteria.

Penicillin: An accidental discovery changed the course of medicine

Penicillin was first discovered in 1928 and is now the most widely used antibiotic in the world. Though Fleming stopped studying penicillin in 1931, his research was continued and finished by Howard Flory and Ernst Chain, researchers at University of Oxford who are credited with the development of penicillin for use as a medicine in mice.

The Discovery of Penicillin—New Insights After More Than 75 Years of Clinical Use

According to British hematologist and biographer Gwyn Macfarlane, the discovery of penicillin was “a series of chance events of almost unbelievable improbability” (1). After just over 75 years of clinical use, it is clear that penicillin’s initial impact was immediate and profound. Its detection completely changed the process of drug discovery, its large-scale production transformed the pharmaceutical industry, and its clinical use changed forever the therapy for infectious diseases.

The wonder and the tragedy of penicillin - video

When penicillin went into mass production at the end of the second world war it was hailed as a wonder drug that would conquer every infection, but creeping bacterial resistance has steadily robbed it of its potency.

Think you’re allergic to penicillin? There’s a good chance you’re wrong

Are you allergic to penicillin? Perhaps you have a friend or relative who is? With about one in ten people reporting a penicillin allergy, that’s not altogether surprising. Penicillin is the most commonly reported drug allergy. But the key word here is “reported”. Only about 20% of this 10% have a true penicillin allergy – so the figure would be one in 50 rather than one in ten.

This Is What Happened to the First American Treated With Penicillin

The patient was a woman named Anne Miller. The diagnosis was septicemia, also known as blood poisoning, that had left her near death from an infection that followed a miscarriage. She had had a fever of at least 103° for multiple weeks, according to Eric Lax’s The Mold in Dr. Florey’s Coat: The Story of the Penicillin Miracle, and even surgery and blood transfusions had not helped.

Weekly Dose: penicillin, the mould that saves millions of lives

The serendipitous discovery of penicillin is testament to the importance of observation. Fleming noticed the mould Penicillium had antibacterial properties and deduced it must be secreting a substance that could kill bacteria – he named this substance penicillin. This led him to famously say: “One sometimes finds what one is not looking for.” As in many instances, there were clues in history that soil had healing properties for skin and wound infections. Healers in ancient Greece, India and Russia used mouldy poultices (a moist package of herbs wrapped in cloth) to treat wounds. It was only in the early 1940s that laboratories such as Pfizer and USDA Northern Regional Research Laboratory developed methods to scale up to commercial production of penicillin.

Weird Science: Penicillin and the Cell Wall

Penicillin interferes with the production of a molecule called peptidoglycan. Peptidoglycan molecules form strong links that give the bacterial cell strength as well as preventing leakage from the cytoplasm. Nearly every bacterium has a peptidoglycan cell wall. The composition of the cell wall differs depending on the type of organism, so penicillin does not affect other organisms.

Why Penicillin Continues To Grow in Importance

ALTHOUGH it kills guinea pigs and thus might never have been approved for use on humans if it were developed under modern regulations, penicillin, which revolutionized the practice of medicine when it was introduced in World War II, remains a “wonder drug” almost 90 years later, and its importance is still growing.