Who knew a small patch of dried-out, decades-old mold would get this pricey?
A capsule of original penicillin mold from which scientist Alexander Fleming made the drug was auctioned off at Bonhams in London, where it was sold for £11,875, or around $14,617.
Piece Of Medical History
The mold, preserved in a round glass container and carrying an inscription by Fleming that states “the mold that first made penicillin,” surpassed early expectations of its auction price on Wednesday, March 1.
The nearly 90-year-old sample, which was sold to an unidentified buyer, came from the collection of the doctor’s niece, Mary Anne Johnston.
The prized object is a capsule of the original Penicillium chrysogenum that Fleming was working with when he discovered the antibiotic, which is credited to have saved millions around the world. From there, penicillin has been mass-produced to treat different bacterial infections.
The Scottish-born doctor, however, widely distributed the original mold. He sent samples out “to dignitaries and to people in the scientific world, almost as a kind of holy relic,” said Bonham’s director of books and manuscripts Matthew Haley, as quoted by AP.
Other portions of mold were given to the likes of Pope Pius XII and Winston Churchill, likely to help preserve Fleming’s legacy in discovering penicillin back in 1928. According to archivist Kevin Brown of the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum, Queen Elizabeth’s husband, Prince Philip, even received multiple copies of the mold.
“Award Fleming an honorary degree? You got mold. Dedicated service in his lab? Mold,” wrote Quartz, adding that the doctor grew his mold gifts on absorbent paper and pressed the specimens between spectacle lenses from his brother’s optometry practice.
In 1996, Sotheby’s offered a similar mold medallion, believed to be among the very few specimens still around. Pfizer bought it for £23,000 or around $51,000 today.
Life Before And After Penicillin
Prior to the birth of penicillin, infections such as pneumonia and rheumatic fever often led to the grave. It was easily hailed a miracle drug and heralded a new era and breakthrough in medicine, Brown said.
And penicillin was a kind of accidental discovery. Fleming saw mold thriving in an existing experiment when he came back to the laboratory from a country house trip. A petri dish was bacteria-laden, except for a section where mold grew. It was a rare penicillin strain that was destroying the bacteria surrounding it.
Oxford scientists developed the drug and its manufacturing became so intense that enough of the antibiotic was made sure to be available for Allied invasion on D-Day back in 1944. Fleming, alongside Oxford scientists Ernst Boris Chain and Howard Walter Florey, received the Nobel Prize in medicine the following year.
Now the world is seeing itself amid the age of superbugs, where bacteria have become resistant to so many antibiotic treatments available. Just last week, the World Health Organization named “priority pathogens” or 12 types of bacteria that it believes pose the greatest human health threat today and kill millions each year.
Part of this “dirty dozen” is carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), which killed an elderly Nevada woman and had become resistant to all antibiotics available in the United States.
