Penicillin purification and mass production (Florey, Chain, Heatley)
Purificación y producción masiva de penicilina
- Date
- 1940-1943 · confidence high
- Place
- Dunn School of Pathology, Oxford, England (and Peoria, Illinois)
- Credited to
- Howard Florey, Ernst Chain, Norman Heatley; Peoria laboratory (USDA)
- People
- 👤 Ernst Boris Chain1906–1979👤 Howard Walter Flore1898–1968👤 Norman Heatley1911–2004
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
They purified penicillin, demonstrated its efficacy in mice (1940) and in patients (1941), and, with submerged fermentation in Peoria, it was produced at industrial scale for D-Day.
Nobel Prize 1945 to Fleming, Florey and Chain; Heatley was omitted.
What it led to
- the modern pharmaceutical industry and industrial fermentation
- a decline in mortality from pneumonia, syphilis and sepsis
- systematic screening of soil microbes for antibiotics
Built on
- Chromatography1903-1906
- Industrial citric acid by fermentation (Currie)1917-1919
- Fleming's penicillin
Made possible
- deep-tank fermentation
- semisynthetic penicillins