Penicillin

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Mark Cuban's Cost Plus to import penicillin to address US shortage

July 17 (Reuters) - (This July 17 story has been corrected to remove the reference to Pfizer's pediatric version of Bicillin-L-A in paragraph 3)

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/mark-cubans-cost-plus-import-penicillin-address-us-shortage-2024-07-17/?

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Miracle Mold

What is penicillin? Penicillin was the first natural antibiotic used to kill or inhibit bacteria in humans, rendering once-fatal infections treatable. Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming discovered the substance by accident in 1928, though it wouldn’t become clinically available until 1941. It took researchers around a decade to develop methods to purify and mass-produce penicillin in the early 1940s. After the US entered World War II, the antibiotic was being manufactured on an industrial scale—cutting Allied battlefield death rates from bacterial pneumonia from about 18% in World War I to less than 1% in World War II. Penicillin works by blocking the building of cell walls in bacteria, leaving the microbes unable to hold themselves together. The bacteria then burst and die, while human cells remain unharmed because they don’t have cell walls.    Experts agree that penicillin is one of history's most important medical discoveries. The “wonder drug” spawned a new class of antibiotic treatments and has saved an estimated 500 million lives worldwide since its production.  ... Read our full deep dive on the antibiotic here.   Also, check out ...  > The same mold behind penicillin is key to blue cheese and flavorful ham. (More) > How the "penicillin girls" helped make the antibiotic possible. (More) > It took 14 years for penicillin to become widely available. (More)