Paper 2, penicillin the discovery and development

Discovered penicillin by chance

• left some dirty petri dishes when he went on holiday with some bacteria in them
• when he returened he saw mould had grown, around the mould the bacteria had disappeared.
• found that penicillin could kill bacteria without harming other cells, used it to treat a scientists eye infection but couldn't get it to work on deeper wounds.
• took a long time to grow enough to use and lots was needed to treat a patient.
• he wrote some notes on his discovery in the medical journal, but left it as that because no one was interested as he didn't test it.
• he never developed penicillin; he only discovered it.

• read flemmings article on penicillin and realised it could be useful, so they tried to get funding from the british government but they only got £25.
• government reluctant to fund because

             - war about to start needed money and factories to make weapons

             - no proof it could cure people

• Florey asked for funding from US government and got enough for 5 years research
• proved it helped mice to recover from infections, but realised they needed more to cure a human. It was hard to mass produce as it took a long time and lots was needed. British drug producers couldn't afford to produce so much.
• They managed to grow enough to treat a patient with blood posioning, the patient started to recover, but they didn't have enough to premantly cure the patient, so he died.

• Britain couldn't mass produce penicillin as they needed the factories to produce weapons instead
• Florey and chain went to America in 1941 just after America joined the war.
• Us government realised importance of Penicillin and provided factories and funding needed for developing penicillin on a larger scale.
• Later on the British government saw the importance of Penicillin and so they started to mass produce it too.

Chance

• flemming discovered penicillin by chance
• he found it when he wasn't looking of it
• he didn't clean up the petri dishes, so mould grew.

War/government

• gave us government a reason to fund the development and mass production
• Later encoraged British government to fund the development
• Us government gave money for research and factories for development

Individuals/teams

• Flemming had the talent and observation skills to discover penicillin in the first place
• Florey and chain worked together to purify and develop penicillin