Penicillin and its medicinal effects were discovered in 1928 by the British microbiologist Alexander Fleming, but the victorious campaign of penicillin began a little later, because the scientist was initially unable to isolate the active substance from the fungus. Pure penicillin was only obtained in 1940 by pathologist Howard Walter Florey and chemist Ernst Boris Chain. At this time, Czech scientists were also interested in penicillin, the production of this drug in Czechoslovakia began on October 26, 1949 in Roztoky near Prague.
The main role in the development of the Czechoslovak penicillin was developed by the pharmaceutical company Benjamin Fragner in Dolní Měcholupy, where a group of Czech scientists succeeded in isolating the “first Czech penicillin” under the name Mykoin BF 510 in wartime conditions. Even at the end of the Second World War, the drug saved several human lives. According to publicist František Houdek, the first person to recover was a thirteen-year-old boy who was injured during Christmas 1944 while skating and who was attacked by severe staphylococcal sepsis and osteomyelitis (bacterial inflammation of the bone marrow).
After the Second World War, the regular production of penicillin began in Czechoslovakia. This task was undertaken by a group of scientists headed by Miloš Herold, Zdenek Kabátek and Ivan Málek, who, with the support of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), went to the USA and Canada for internships. The government also agreed with UNRRA that the organization would equip a new factory. The solutions were most likely chosen because the Society for Chemical and Metallurgical Production needed to get rid of the solution production plant for varnishes and paints, which was in poor condition after a series of disasters.
The development of penicillin production was not stopped even by changes in the political conditions in Czechoslovakia, and in the spring of 1949 the first trial samples of the drug were produced. Regular production was then started in October with great fanfare and the participation of the then communist leaders. Miloš Herold became the first director of the plant, called Penicillinová výrobryna and known among people as “penicillinka”, the microbiological section was headed by Málek and Petr Frágner, Kabátek was entrusted with the technical management.
Thanks to the success of its own development and expansion of capacities, production in Roztoky was expanded from the 1950s to include other pharmaceutical products, later it was for example ephedrine, and the production of penicillin was moved to the village of Slovenská Ľupča near Banská Bystrica. In 1966, the two entities that were created by the reorganization of the “penicillin” merged, and the Research Institute of Antibiotics and Biotransformation was founded, which, as a joint-stock company VUAB Pharma, is still based in the building of the former penicillin factory.
VUAB Pharma is still engaged in pharmaceutical production in Roztoky near Prague today, it concentrates on the production of nystatin, a medicinal substance effective against yeast fungi, and produces anti-cancer drugs at the Brno plant. AtB Pharma (formerly Biotika) in Slovenská Ľupča continues the tradition of Czechoslovak penicillin production. The company, founded in 1953, used to be part of the Spofa concern, which brought together all pharmaceutical companies in Czechoslovakia.
In recent years, there has been more and more talk about the possibility of resuming the production of penicillin in the Czech Republic, as well as other basic raw materials for the most widely used medicines. The Czech Republic, like other European countries, is faced with occasional and longer-lasting shortages of certain medicines – from painkillers or fever medicines to antibiotics, for example, to medicines for asthma or cancer. The basic problem is that, in recent decades, European countries have stopped producing basic raw materials, which are produced more cheaply in Asia.
But supply chains were disrupted by anti-covid measures, especially in China. The basic production of chemicals, which are also often used for the production of medicines, is also a major polluter of the environment and would not even be possible in Europe in its current form due to environmental regulations. However, this does not apply to penicillin, which is still produced in Slovakia, where the basic raw materials used in the Czech Republic for the production of penicillin tablets by the BB Pharma company, which also owns the Slovak factory, come from.
Penicillin, which is considered to be the first systemic antibiotic, was discovered by Alexander Fleming, a bacteriologist at the London Hospital, in 1928. During the examination of staphylococci, while cleaning, he noticed swelling mold on several forgotten dishes, but next to which the microbes had died. Through further experiments, he discovered that the mold not only kills staphylococci, but also other microbes, and that it is not poisonous. He named it after the name of that fungus Penicillium notatum.
However, Fleming has not yet succeeded in isolating the active substance from the mold, which was only achieved in 1940 by a team of scientists from the University of Oxford led by chemists Ernst Boris Chain and Howard Walter Florey, who five years later received the Nobel Prize with Fleming for this discovery. But another problem was to develop a process for the production of penicillin, for which no money could be found in Britain, so Florey went to the US to seek help. Thanks to the research of the American government, the “super drug” could start to be produced in the fall of 1943, and a year later it was treating, for example, soldiers in the war.
Source: www.tyden.cz
