The Contribution of Soviet Military Scientists to the Development of Industrial Technologies for the Production of the First Domestic Antibiotics (Penicillin and Streptomycin)

Abstract

In the domestic literature, the industrial production of penicillin and streptomycin is commonly attributed to the representatives of civil institutions and enterprises. However, the key role of military scientists in solving this problem remains in the background. The purpose of this article is to summarize the available facts about the role of Soviet military scientists in creating a technology for obtaining the first antibiotics in the USSR. At the beginning of 1942, all the works, related to the penicillin in the Soviet Union, was headed by academician of AMS USSR Z. V. Ermolyeva. At the first stage of the research, the technology for obtaining penicillin was applied, based on the use of a surface method of growing cultures of the antibiotic-producing fungus in mattresses. But this method could not meet the country's needs for the drug. In early 1944, the Soviet government tasked the Research Institute of Epidemiology and Hygiene of the Red Army (NIIEG) in Kirov (now a branch of the Federal State Budgetary Institution «48th Central Research Institute» of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation) to solve the case of mass production of penicillin and streptomycin. In 1944–1945 for the first time in the USSR military specialists from NIIEG developed a technology for the industrial production of penicillin by the deep method with aeration. The deep cultivation was carried out in cultivator devices designed by engineer-Lieutenant Colonel A. V. Krutyakov. During the research, a fungus strain (Penicillium chrysogenum 23248) was selected from a large number of studied strains, the use of which provided the highest yields of penicillin, and the most effective cultivation conditions were selected. The experience, obtained by the Soviet military specialists during the development of the technology for the deep production of penicillin, served in 1946-1947 as the basis for the creation of the method for obtaining domestic streptomycin from the domestic Streptomyces griseus. In 1947, for the first time in the world an employee of the NIIEG Lieutenant Colonel of medical service N. I. Nikolaev and civil doctors D. D. Fedorinov and V. I. Gorokhov used the NIIEG streptomycin successfully for the treatment of patients with pneumonic plague during the plague epidemic in Manchuria. In the late 1940s the technologies for the production of penicillin and streptomycin, as well as the relevant documentation, were transferred to civil healthcare institutions for the industrial development.