The Accidental Discovery that Changed the Face of Medicine

Though some of the most astounding medical breakthroughs are notable for occurring outside of formal scientific method (without a formal hypothesis to test), they each owe their existence to the spirit of inquiry that is the hallmark of all human exploration and which gave rise to the scientific method itself.

From Nobel laureate James Watson’s and his research partner Francis Crick’s dream-based discovery of the structure of DNA, to Wilson Greatbatch’s invention of the pacemaker, to Harold Ridley’s invention of the intraocular lens, science marches on, sometimes owing as much to good luck and happy accidents as to the open-mindedness and personal tenacity that are required of researchers to see an accidental discovery through to reliable replication and mass availability.

Among the most famous and game-changing medical breakthroughs of the last century is Sir Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin, and the Age of Antibiotics that Fleming’s subsequent research ushered in.

Fleming, who was often described by his peers as a less-than-conscientious lab technician, returned to his London lab in 1928 after a brief holiday to find that a culture of staphylococcus had been contaminated by mold. Fleming’s interest was piqued when he noticed that the mold — which he described as a “fluffy white mass which rapidly increases in size, and after a few days sporulates” — prevented the growth of staphylococci. The “contamination” turned out to be the cure for many infections and illnesses that prior to this discovery were life-threatening and had resulted in countless deaths.

Of his discovery, Fleming wrote: “One sometimes finds what one is not looking for. When I woke up just after dawn on Sept. 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. But I guess that was exactly what I did.”

In 1929, Fleming published an article in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology that described the mechanics of his discovery:

“The staphylococcus colonies became transparent and were obviously undergoing lysis…the broth in which the mold had been grown at room temperature for one to two weeks had acquired marked inhibitory, bactericidal, and bacteriolytic properties to many of the more common pathogenic bacteria.”

Though Fleming studied penicillin only through 1931, University of Oxford researchers Howard Flory and Ernst Chain continued his work, developing penicillin as a medicine that today is credited with saving millions of lives.

Widespread use of penicillin did not occur till more than 15 years after Fleming’s discovery, with the first patient successfully treated with the new drug in 1942. The timing of this achievement was significant, since World War II was raging, and the new drug was desperately needed to combat infections and illnesses. With only 400 million units of penicillin available during the first half of 1943, production exponentially increased, and by the time the war was over,  pharma production was achieving monthly yields of 650 billion units.

Interestingly, though treatments existed in the 1930s for pneumococcal pneumonia and other illnesses that penicillin would be found to successfully treat, penicillin’s treatment efficacy was so unquestionably superior to existing treatments that it was never subject to a randomized, controlled research trial.

Accidental medical discoveries aren’t just a thing of the past and occur frequently, even today.

At Lifecycle Biotechnologies, in our role of providing leading-edge tools and services to the life science industry, we play an active role in supporting the discoveries of medical breakthroughs. In doing so, we aim to better understand and respond to the needs of the rapidly evolving industry and to support our diverse client population across multiple disciplinary domains and market segments.

If you’d like to see how our innovative products can help your company scale for the research methodologies of the future, contact us today and see what we can do for you.