Penicillin laid the foundation for modern healthcare
With the discovery and large-scale production of antibiotics like penicillin, a wide range of bacterial infections were no longer considered life-threatening, driving a sharp increase in global life expectancy during the second half of the twentieth century.
At Centrient Pharmaceuticals, our core product range is the penicillin family of antibiotics. Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin in 1928 paved the way for modern healthcare, making surgery, cancer treatments, organ transplants, and other major interventions possible.
This is all common knowledge… but did you know that scientists from Centrient Pharmaceuticals’ predecessor company were involved in developing the scale-up process of penicillin?
During the Second World War, a group of Dutch scientists working for de Nederlandsche Gist- en Spiritusfabriek (‘the Netherlands Yeast and Spirit Factory’) worked on creating an industrial fermentative process for making penicillin in large quantities under the code name ‘Bacinol’.
By leveraging the company’s long heritage in fermentation and yeast production, these scientists helped to meet the strong demand for penicillin in the years after the war.
By 1949, de Nederlandsche Gist- en Spiritusfabriek started exporting penicillin all over the world. In the 1970s under the name of Gist-Brocades, we had become the proud world’s number one Penicillin G provider.
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