Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

MICHAEL MOSLEY:

But despite these improvements, the inefficiency of the actual production process meant that by 1943 there were still only enough penicillin to treat a lucky few.

MAN 1:

The standard techniques were large white bottom flasks because you had a single layer of mould producing, the yields from each flask were minimal.

MICHAEL MOSLEY:

And the need for penicillin had never been more urgent. D-day, the greatest amphibious invasion in history, was only months away. Casualties were going to be horrific.

MAN 2:

Penicillin was the US military's second top research priority after the Manhattan Project, after nuclear weapons.

MICHAEL MOSLEY:

It was then that a small chemical company based in this building in Brooklyn, called Pfizer, got involved. Now, these days, Pfizer is better known for its anti-impotence drug, Viagra. But back then, they produced citric acid used in fizzy drinks.

Now, they realised, as everyone else had, that if you just grow penicillin on the surface of a liquid then that is going to be really inefficient. What you want to do is grow it throughout the liquid. The problem is that penicillin needs oxygen to grow. So they came up with a solution which they hoped would work.

MAN 1:

The oxygenation came with a tube introduced into the medium into which oxygen was pumped. But you couldn't put too much, and you couldn't put too little. So learning how much was right was key.

MICHAEL MOSLEY:

There was absolutely no guarantee the technique would work. But the company took a gamble. Because of wartime shortages, they had to convert an old Brooklyn ice factory, scrounging a boiler from Indiana and a lift from Long Island.

With just two months to go before D-day, they installed 14 giant fermentation tanks. Then they added the corn syrup and the cantaloupe mould before turning on the air.

The results were spectacular. They soon began producing five times as much penicillin as originally planned. By June 1944, the D-day invasions, there was enough penicillin for every injured soldier. And most of it was produced right here in the Pfizer plant in Brooklyn.