PMID: 22332461Feb 16, 2012Paper

Magic bullets and moving targets: antibiotic resistance and experimental chemotherapy, 1900-1940

Dynamis
Christoph Gradmann

Abstract

It was in the 1940s that antibiotic resistance arose as an object of study for clinical medicine. Somewhat earlier it had become an important analytical tool for bacterial geneticists. However, the concept of antibiotic resistance as an induced and inheritable trait of microbial species was introduced a generation earlier in the years preceding the First World War. The paper reconstructs the concept that was put forward by the German immunologist Paul Ehrlich in 1907. He came across the phenomenon when trying to develop chemotherapies for trypanosomiasis, the best known of which is African sleeping sickness. However, resistance was studied by him for other than therapy-related purposes. It provided a productive laboratory model for the study of cell functions. Induced resistance to chemicals facilitated the development of ideas on the relation of a parasite's cellular metabolism and of drug action, i.e. by providing a negative proof for the existence of chemoreceptors on the surfaces of parasite cells. This approach does also serve to explain why British and German researchers continued to study the phenomenon of induced resistance in microbes for decades -despite it being absent from clinical medicine. After all, there existed...Continue Reading

Citations

Mar 10, 2016·Materials Science & Engineering. C, Materials for Biological Applications·Katarzyna Krukiewicz, Jerzy K Zak
Mar 22, 2015·The Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy·Laura Bowater
Jul 19, 2016·Environment International·Isabel T Carvalho, Lúcia Santos
Sep 20, 2016·Journal of Oral Microbiology·Leron KhalifaRonen Hazan
Dec 18, 2013·Medical History·André Felipe Cândido da Silva, Jaime Larry Benchimol
Jun 20, 2020·Expert Opinion on Drug Discovery·Mateus Sá Magalhães SerafimVinícius Gonçalves Maltarollo

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