Is it true that penicillin was invented in the USSR?

On September 7, during a direct line with citizens, the Governor of the Rostov Region Vasily Golubev said that for the first time the antibiotic was allocated by the Soviet microbiologist Zinaida Ermolyev. We decided to check if this is so.

During a direct line, Rostov Governor declared: “Zinaida Vasilievna Ermoleva ... This is the woman ... She is our countrywoman, who was called" Madame Penicillin. " She invented Penicillin. Once the British argued that they were the first. No". Subsequently, the regional administration did not receive any refutations or clarifications of what was said by Golubev.

Penicillin - This is an antibiotic obtained from Penicillium Notatum molds. First Scientific articleDedicated to this drug and its antibacterial properties, was released in 1929. The author of the study was a Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming.

Its discovery of Fleming committed In fact by accident. On September 3, 1928, he left for the weekend, locked the laboratory. At this time, he studied the properties of golden staphylococcus. Having returned, the scientist found that due to the general disorder in the Petri cup with staphylococcus bacteria, mold hit. The colonies of bacteria in those places where Penicillium notatum turned out to be transparent: mold destroyed bacterial cells.

The assistant, to whom Fleming spoke about his discovery, recalled that the scientist in 1922 almost the same Opened Another antibacterial drug is lysozyme. But in that case, the mucus from the nose of the Fleming fell into Petri's cup. After the opening of penicillin Fleming He made a report At the University of London, and then wrote an article for a scientific journal. But, despite the importance of the discovery and the ability of penicillin to fight bacterial infections, the discovery did not receive practical development then. Work on the further study of penicillin was discontinued.

In 1939, a group of scientists of the University of Oxford, headed by Ernst Boris Cheyne and Howard Florie, resumed studies of Penicillin's properties. Chain later Recognizedthat at the beginning of his work, his team did not expect to use the substance as a medicine. During the year, scientists first raised penicillin, trying to understand how to produce more substances. Then in 1940, the drug began to be tested for toxicity. Experimentally, researchers found that penicillin is effective against staphylococcus, streptococcus and gas gangrene. The results of the work were published In the same 1940 in The Lancet magazine.

American researchers from Colombian University drew attention to the article and in 1941 continued the work of British colleagues, already conducting experiments in humans. About it soon wrote The New York Times, and pharmaceutical companies became interested in penicillin. Since the end of 1942, penicillin already Produced In industrial quantities, having learned to enzyme the drug in large containers. By 1944, Penicillin was supplied with the American army during the Second World War.

The Soviet microbiologist Zinaida Vissarionovna (and not Vasilievna, as the Rostov Governor called it) Ermolyeva developed domestic penicillin in parallel with the British and American colleagues. In 1942, Ermolyeva, who worked at the All -Union Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, Highlighted An analogue of the antibiotic, called Krustosin. The first clinical trials began in the middle of the same year. In 1944, Howard Florey He arrived in MoscowTo exchange experience with Zinaida Ermolyeva. British and Soviet scientists compared the drugs obtained to determine their effectiveness. At the end of 1944, the first doses of domestic penicillin began to be sent to the front.

In 1945, the Nobel Prize in the field of medicine and physiology was awarded for the discovery of penicillin and its healing properties in infectious diseases. The prize was divided between Alexander Fleming (as the discoverer of Penicillin), Ernst Boris Chain and Hovard Flores (as scientists who brought Fleming's work to the end). Fleming’s championship, which discovered Penicillin in 1928 and wrote a scientific article about this in 1929, was never disputed. Zinaida Ermoleva became famous as the inventor of the first Soviet antibiotic.

Thus, the words of the Rostov governor that Penicillin in the USSR had invented before the British are not true.

Photo on the cover: Molecular model of penicillin, London Museum of Medicine

Not true

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