Penecillin?

Question

who was albert alexander and why is he still remembered?

what was the big incentive to mass produce penecillin in 1941?

why did florey and chain start mass producing it in the usa

who was mouldy mary and what part did she play in the penecillin story

how were chain fleming and florey rewarded for thieir work

with the development of penecillin, everyone thought the battle against bacteria had been won. why were they wrong?

Answer 1

Reserve Constable Albert Alexander (c. 1873 – 15 March 1941), the first patient to be treated with penicillin.
During World War II, penicillin made a major difference in the number of deaths and amputations caused by infected wounds amongst Allied forces; saving an estimated 12-15% of lives. Availability was severely limited, however, by the difficulty of manufacturing large quantities of penicillin and by the rapid renal clearance of the drug necessitating frequent dosing. Penicillins are actively secreted and about 80% of a penicillin dose is cleared within three to four hours of administration. During those times it became common procedure to collect the urine from patients being treated so that the penicillin could be isolated and reused.

This was not a satisfactory solution, however, so researchers looked for a way to slow penicillin secretion. They hoped to find a molecule that could compete with penicillin for the organic acid transporter responsible for secretion such that the transporter would preferentially secrete the competitive inhibitor. The uricosuric agent probenecid proved to be suitable. When probenecid and penicillin are concomitantly administered, probenecid competitively inhibits the secretion of penicillin, increasing its concentration and prolonging its activity. The advent of mass-production techniques and semi-synthetic penicillins solved supply issues, and this use of probenecid declined.Probenecid is still clinically useful, however, for certain infections requiring particularly high concentrations of penicillins.

The chemical structure of penicillin was determined by Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin in the early 1940s, enabling synthetic production. A team of Oxford research scientists led by Australian Howard Walter Florey and including Ernst Boris Chain and Norman Heatley discovered a method of mass producing the drug. Florey and Chain shared the 1945 Nobel prize in medicine with Fleming for this work. Penicillin has since become the most widely used antibiotic to date and is still used for many Gram-positive bacterial infections

Answer 2

idk but penecillin is good we always have to go into mexico to get it. it's really expensive here.