meet with Howard Florey, who would later take on a vital role in the development of penicillin. By the mid 1930s, the advent of sulfa-drugs essentially ended all of Fleming’s research on penicillin. However, during this time period, Howard Florey had begun research on lysozymes, and took special interest in antibiotics in 1938 after reading Fleming’s original paper. Ernst Chain, working in Florey’s lab, carried out many of the initial experiments in lab mice, all highly successful in treating infections of streptococcus bacterium. Human tests soon thereafter, also proved penicillin to be highly effective, even in cases in which sulfa-drugs had failed. However, production of the drug was still a problem, and trials could not be conducted on a large scale. By this time it was 1941, and although penicillin’s benefits had proven, culture mediums were still only yielding one part-per-million penicillin. With Word War II raging, and resources becoming scarce, Florey negotiated with the Rockefeller Foundation of the United States to move himself and a colleague to the United States in order for him to continue his research. This project would gain added momentum when the United States entered the war, with the development of penicillin becoming a war project. Shortly thereafter, it was determined that Fleming’s original strain would not be able to produce the amount of bacterium necessary for medicinal application. New strains were sought out, with Penicillium chryogeum finally winning out. This new variety would produce two hundred times the amount of penicillin as the original Penicillium notatum. However, this amount was still inadequate. The bacteria was then bombarded with ultraviolet and X-rays in a successful attempt to induce mutations, which ultimately yielded one-thousand times the amount of penicillin as the original. In conjunction with this, new methods for culturing penicillin were disc...
