There has long been a tendency, particularly in the medical and pharmaceutical fields, to regard microbes as harmful entities to be destroyed. The exploitation of microorganisms and their products has assumed an increasingly prominent role in the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of human diseases.
THE WIDER
CONTRIBUTION OF MICROBIOLOGY TO THE PHARMACEUTICAL SCIENCES
INTRODUCTION
There has long been a tendency, particularly
in the medical and pharmaceutical fields, to regard microbes as harmful
entities to be destroyed. The exploitation of microorganisms and their products
has assumed an increasingly prominent role in the diagnosis, treatment and
prevention of human diseases. Non-medical uses are also of significance, e.g.
the use of bacterial spores (Bacillus thuringiensis)
and viruses (baculoviruses) to control insect pests, the fungus Sclerotinia sclerotiorum to kill some common
weeds, and improved varieties of Trichoderma harzianum to
protect crops against fungal infections, and these will also be explored.
The earliest uses of microorganisms to
treat human disease can be traced to the belief that the formation of pus in
some way drained off noxious humours responsible for systemic diseases.
Although the spontaneous appearance of pus in their patients’ wounds satisfied
most physicians, deliberate contamination of wounds was also practiced. Bizarre
concoctions of bacteria such as ‘ointment of pigs’ dung’ and ‘herb sclerata’
were particularly favoured during the Middle Ages. Early central European and
South American civilizations cultivated various fungi for application to
wounds. In the 19th century, sophisticated concepts of microbial antagonism
were developed following Pasteur’s experiments demonstrating inhibition of
anthrax bacteria by ‘common bacteria’ simultaneously introduced into the same
culture medium. Patients suffering with diseases such as diphtheria,
tuberculosis and syphilis were treated by deliberate infection with what were
then thought to be harmless bacteria such as staphylococci, Escherichia coli and lacto-bacilli. Following
their discovery in the early part of the last century, bacterial viruses
(bacteriophages) were considered as potential antibacterial agents—an idea that
soon fell into disuse but has recently been revived.
Some of the most important and widespread uses of microorganisms in the
pharmaceutical sciences are in the production of antibiotics and vaccines and
the use of microorganisms in the recombinant DNA industry. There are a variety
of other medicinal agents derived from microorganisms including vitamins, amino
acids, dextrans, iron-chelating agents and enzymes. Microorganisms as whole or
subcellular fractions, in suspension or immobilized in an inert matrix are
employed in a variety of assays. Microorganisms have also been used in the
pharmaceutical industry to achieve specific modifications of complex drug
molecules such as steroids, in situations where synthetic routes are difficult
and expensive to carry out, and more recently microorganisms have been employed
in their own right as platforms for the discovery of novel therapeutic peptides
and proteins.
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