Fleming, Florey and Chain and penicillin Flashcards
All 7 cards in this deck
What did Alexander Fleming discover in 1928?
Penicillin — he noticed a mould killing the bacteria in a Petri dish in his laboratory at St Mary's Hospital, London.
What was the contribution of Florey and Chain to penicillin?
From 1939 at Oxford they purified penicillin and proved it worked on patients (Albert Alexander, 1941), then won funding to mass produce it.
Why was penicillin mass produced from 1942–44?
The US government funded drug companies to make it for wounded troops after America entered the war; by D-Day (1944) there was enough for all Allied casualties.
Why did Fleming not develop penicillin further after publishing his findings in 1929?
He had no funding to continue, and he did not believe penicillin would work inside a living body.
Why was penicillin hard to produce in large amounts at first?
The mould made only tiny amounts of the drug, so one patient needed vast quantities, grown slowly in many containers, which was costly.
When did British drug companies begin mass-producing penicillin, and why not earlier?
- British factories were too stretched by war production to take it on, so in 1941 Florey had turned to American drug companies instead.
Who shared the 1945 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for penicillin?
Alexander Fleming, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain.