Alexander FlemingA Significant Contribution to Modern Medicine

1881- 1955

Introduction To Sir Alexander FlemingSir Alexander Fleming (6 August 1881 - 11 March 1955) was a Scottish biologist, pharmacologist, and botanist. His best-known discoveries are the enzyme lysozyme in 1923 and the antibiotic substance benzylpenicillin from the mould Penicillium notatum in 1928, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain. He wrote many articles on bacteriology, immunology and chemotherapy.

Introduction To Sir Alexander FlemingFleming went to Loudoun Moor School and Darvel School, and earned a two-year scholarship to Kilmarnock Academy before moving to London, where he attended the Royal Polytechnic Institution. After working in a shipping office for four years, the twenty-year-old Fleming inherited some money from an uncle, John Fleming. His elder brother, Tom, was already a physician and suggested to his younger sibling that he should follow the same career, and so in 1903, the younger Alexander enrolled at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School in Paddington; where he qualified with an MBBS degree from the school with distinction in 1906.

History of Sir Alexander Fleming Venture• Early in his medical life, Fleming became interested in the

natural bacterial action of the blood and in antiseptics. • He was able to continue his studies throughout his military

career and on demobilization he settled to work on antibacterial substances which would not be toxic to animal tissues.

• In 1921, he discovered in «tissues and secretions» an important bacteriolytic substance which he named Lysozyme. About this time, he devised sensitivity titration methods and assays in human blood and other body fluids, which he subsequently used for the titration of penicillin.

History of Sir Alexander Fleming Venture• In 1928, while working on influenza virus, he observed that mould

had developed accidently on a staphylococcus culture plate and that the mould had created a bacteria-free circle around itself. He was inspired to further experiment and he found that a mould culture prevented growth of staphylococci, even when diluted 800 times. He named the active substance penicillin.

Impact of Sir Alexander Fleming Venture

•  The discovery of penicillin changed the world of medicine enormously. With its development, infections that were previously severe and often fatal, like bacterial endocarditis, bacterial meningitis and pneumococcal pneumonia, could be easily treated.

• Even dating all the way back to World War II and today with the war in Iraq, soldiers experienced injuries that would have been fatal without penicillin and other antibiotics that were developed subsequently. It is really impossible for me to imagine what the world would be like without penicillin. I question whether there would be a discipline of infectious diseases as we know it today.By:– Theodore C. Eickhoff, MD

Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Disease at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center

Impact of Sir Alexander Fleming Venture• There were beginning treatments for pneumococcal pneumonia in

the 1930s with antisera and sulfonamides, but use of these treatments quickly came to a halt, and everyone began using penicillin. This quickly led to a number of pharmaceutical industries beginning to screen a variety of other natural products for antibacterial activity, which led to a whole host of new antibiotics, such as streptomycin, aminoglycosides, tetracycline and the like. Penicillin clearly led the way in that development.

By:– Theodore C. Eickhoff, MDProfessor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Disease at the

University of Colorado Health Sciences Center

Impact of Sir Alexander Fleming Venture• It is interesting that using penicillin for the treatment of infections

like pneumococcal pneumonia and bacterial endocarditis never had a randomized, controlled trial because the difference with treatment was so clearly apparent that no one even thought of doing a randomized controlled trial.

By:– Theodore C. Eickhoff, MDProfessor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Disease at the

University of Colorado Health Sciences Center

Thank you for your kind attention!

By: Adrian, Gary & Yong Jie

Sources: • http://www.biography.com/people/alexander-fleming-9296894:• – Theodore C. Eickhoff, MD------Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Disease

at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center