H.W. Florey

The classic : penicillin as a chemotherapeutic agent

Ernest Boris Chain (Fig. I ) was born and educated in Berlin. He obtained his doctor of philosophy from Friedrich-Whilhelms University in 1933, majoring in chemistry and physiology. Initially, he worked as a biochemist in the Institute for Pathology at the CharitC Hospital in Berlin, but in 1933, because of the rise of the Nazi regime, he moved to England, where he became a British citizen. For two years, he worked in the School of Biochemistry at Cambridge, and then moved to the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at Oxford, where he worked with Professor Howard Florey. Florey called his attention to the paper published by Alexander Reming in 1928 which reported the observation that the mould, Pt.nicillium notatum, produced a bacteriainhibiting substance that Fleming had not been able to isolate. In collaboration with Florey, Chain began the study of antibacterial substances produced by microorganisms, which culminated with the discovery of the therapeutic properties of pure penicillin. This work was done under severe financial hardship because of limited support by the British Medical Research Council. Although Chain was able to produce small amounts of penicillin, he lacked the enormous resources that permitted laboratories in the United States to rapidly produce commercial quantities of the material. In 1945, Chain, Florey, and Fleming shared the Nobel Prize for “the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases.” Unable to get the research support that he believed he deserved, Chain moved to Rome where he organized a Department of Biochemistry at the State Institute of Health. At the International Centre for Chemical Microbiology, he finally had the facilities he needed for continuing his work. In 1964, Chain returned to London to the Imperial College where a well-funded position had been created for him. The last years of his life were filled with additional honors, including a knighthood in 1969. The following paper, published in 1940, was the first to establish that penicillin was effective against bacteria in v ivo as well as in vitru, and opened up a new era in the treatment of bacterial infections.