Giuseppe Brotzu (1895–1976), Howard Florey (1898–1968), Edward Abraham (1913–1999), Guy Newton (1919–1969)
Giuseppe Brotzu, professor of hygiene at the University of Cagliari in Italy, had many accomplishments. The most noteworthy of these were his work with the Rockefeller Foundation and his use of DDT to eliminate malaria from the island of Sardinia. But it is his discovery of the cephalosporins, among the most widely used antibiotics, that interests us here.
Typhoid fever is a disease spread by bacterial contamination of water supplies and inadequate treatment of sewage. Contaminated water was an endemic problem in Sardinia, and yet individuals bathing in it or eating shellfish from the sea in the vicinity of a sewage outlet seemed unaffected. This observation led Brotzu to speculate that a mold in the sewage might be producing a substance that killed the typhoid-causing bacteria. He sampled the water, isolated a mold, and found that it prevented the growth of many bacteria in both petri dishes and patients—findings he published in 1948.
FROM SEWERS TO THE CLINIC. Samples of the mold were sent to Howard Florey, professor of pathology at Oxford, who in 1945 shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Alexander Fleming for his work leading to the introduction of penicillin into medical practice. Over the next dozen years, Florey’s colleagues Edward Abraham and Guy Newton worked to isolate and identify the chemistry of the active antibiotic, cephalosporin C.
In 1964, Eli Lilly marketed cephalothin (Keflin), the first of some twenty cephalosporins that bear the revealing prefix cef-. To differentiate them, they are commonly grouped into four “generations.” The classification, while not perfect, is based on their relative activity against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. The cephalosporins act in a manner similar to penicillin and are often used to combat the same types of microbes, but they can be used in many patients who are allergic to penicillin.
Cephalosporins—often used in agriculture to treat infections in cattle and other animals—are injected into the eggs of broiler chickens. The Food and Drug Administration has expressed concern that such uses pose a threat to humans by contributing to the development of bacterial infections that are resistant to antibiotic treatment.
SEE ALSO Food and Drug Administration (1906), Penicillin (1928), DDT (1939), Ampicillin (1961).
Mold found in a sewage system like this one was the source of cephalosporins, one of the world’s most widely used classes of antibiotics.