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On 10 December 1945, Alexander Fleming, Howard Florey, and Ernst Chain were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine ‘for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases.’ The discovery of penicillin and its subsequent industrial production during World War Two is rightly hailed as one of the biggest medical breakthroughs of the 20th century. Penicillin played a pivotal role for millions of allied soldiers and over the last 80 years has saved hundreds of millions of lives.
The development of penicillin established a new model for translational research. Fleming’s discovery of penicillin from the Penicilium mould was published as a curious observation. Building on these findings, Florey, Chain and Norman Heatley at the Dunn School of Pathology in Oxford isolated penicillin for the first time, with bedpans being used to grow and ferment the mould. Although quantities of pure penicillin were limited, they were sufficient to demonstrate its curative effects in mice and a human patient. The penicillin program was subsequently supported by a grant by the Rockefeller foundation, then by involvement of British and US pharmaceutical companies, backed by their governments. This led remarkably quickly to mass production of penicillin, in an early example of transatlantic collaboration for biomedical research.
Read the full story on the University of Oxford website.