Christopher Alabi shares his insight on the the history, technical considerations and processes, and impact of antibiotics. The thing that stood out to me about his presentation was the technicality behind mass production of medicines. Early on in the history of antibiotics, mass production was an issue. When penicillin (or was it something else) was first discovered as having antibiotic properties, not enough could be produced to save the patient that was being treated with it.

During WWII, morphine needed to increase production to keep up with the demand created by warfare. This forced researchers to create new, more productive and efficient methods. In order to keep the morphine-making yeast alive, it had to have oxygen to respirate. They wanted to create morphine in drums, but the yeast needed oxygen. A technique was created to inject oxygen into the tank, allowing the yeast to produce morphine in a more efficient manner.

While in the present day, medicines seem ubiquitous. It is easy to lose sight of just how recent “modern medicine” became a thing. However, the question is whether researchers are able to find enough new antibiotics to keep up with the evolution speed of diseases.

The Rose Cafe talk on Antibiotics was rather enlightening. I had heard much of the buzz around antibiotics in recent news as to developing resistance and doctors over-prescribing to patients. It was interesting to learn the history behind antibiotics all the way back to the “accidental” development of penicillin.

It was helpful to hear from an expert as to what resistance means for us in everyday life and how our actions and usage of antibiotics can impact the overall resistance of the population. Additionally, I found it interesting how different animals compare and contrast with humans in terms of their responses to various antibiotics and how such reactions impact the process of medical testing.

We frequently hear about the fight with antibiotic resistance, whether it’s in school, or on the news, etc. I attended this Rose Talk so I could learn more about the history of antibiotics, and I’m quite glad I did, as my wishes were sufficiently answered.

It all started in 1924 when Alexander Fleming had a cold while working with agar plates. Some of his mucus dropped onto an agar plate, and although this was a little gross, this accident led to the discovery of lysozyme. One of the most powerful natural antibacterial and antiviral compounds known to man, lysozyme has been used in foods and pharmaceuticals for over three decades as it naturally inhibits the growth of many spoilage organisms, increases a healthy shelf life and ensures food safety. It also boosts the immunity system.

Fleming also discovered the well-known penicillin in 1928 when he left agar plates out in his lab with a window open. Upon returning to his lab, he noticed that certain spots in the plates had mold growing around it, with no bacteria around the mold. This discovery was eloquently deemed to be called “mold juice” by Fleming, but is known as penicillin today.

In the talk, we learned more about the scaling up of penicillin production, and how it has affected the course of medical history. All in all, antibiotic resistance is inevitable, but there are ways that we can reduce its spread and effects. We must educate ourselves on when to use antibiotics and not use them so liberally.

I attended the Rose Cafe talk about antibiotics because I was not well-informed about their effects and prevalence. Through the cafe talk, I learned the history of antibiotics and how they were used in the past. We also had a discussion about whether the use of antibiotics is necessary. In my opinion, the use of too many antibiotics by many people leads to an adaptation of the human species that is ultimately detrimental. We are stopping our natural antibodies from fighting the issues themselves, which can make our bodies weaker in turn. Although people with weaker systems such as babies and the elderly might need them when sick, healthy people should refrain from over-using antibiotics and trust their bodies to protect them.

Last week I had the opportunity of going to the talk on antibiotic resistance. Learning about the history of antibiotics and about the role that chemical engineers played in the scaling up of penicillin production was very interesting and covered facts I hadn’t heard of before. What I found most interesting was how the healthy and strong in society could help in fighting antibiotic resistance by letting whatever sickness run its course. You of course must know your body and determine the severity of the sickness but just letting it run its course helps others that have a more vulnerable immune system. I see the importance in this as well as the importance in patients understanding better when they go to the doctor. People need to understand that sometimes rest is all that is needed rather than a prescription. I really enjoyed this talk and hope to have more like it. It was very informative and captivating.

Last Wednesday, I attended the Rose Café event where Professor Alabi came to talk about the history of antibiotics and bacterial resistance towards antibiotics. It was interesting to learn how the first antibiotic was found and the general history of antibiotic research and usages. In addition, it was beneficial to learn more about antibiotic resistance and when antibiotic medicines should be prescribed. Based on my personal experience, doctors often prescribe antibiotics when they “think” that I am sick due to bacterial infection. After listening to Professor Alabi, I was shocked that the doctors are often not entirely sure if their patients have a bacterial infection unless they do testings that may take three to four days. Since antibiotics can kill even beneficial bacteria within our bodies, I learned that I should make effective decisions when receiving antibiotics. Also, it was interesting to learn that actually finishing antibiotic prescription rather than stopping in the middle is more effective in reducing antibiotic resistance. Overall, it was an interesting discussion that combined engineering and microbiology.

Last Wednesday I attended Professor Alabi’s talk on bacteria and antibiotic resistance. I found this talk to be really interesting. One thing that stood out to me was how doctors sometimes have a tendency to over-prescribe antibiotics to people. According to Professor Alabi, most healthy individuals would generally be fine without taking antibiotics, and instead just letting the immune system handle it. Furthermore, doctors often do not know if an infection is bacterial or viral, and typically in the amount of time it would take to test it the infection has already passed. In order to satisfy the patient, doctors tend to just prescribe antibiotics without knowing if it is even bacterial. I remember experiencing something like this a few years ago, where my doctor actually told me that she did not know if I had a bacterial or viral infection, and that she was going to prescribe antibiotics to me just to be safe. Looking back at the incident, I am reasonably certain that I would have been fine without taking antibiotics at that time, however since a doctor — who theoretically knows more than I do about medicine — suggested that I take antibiotics, I thought that I should. Perhaps if doctors did not feel like they had to give their patients something, and were more willing to tell their patients to just go home and wait an infection out, then antibiotics would not be as overused.

One thing that I am glad that Professor Alabi mentioned was that we should use common sense on whether or not to take antibiotics. As someone who has actually had a fairly serious bacterial infection (I was in the hospital for several days), it was obvious to me at the time that I needed some sort of medical care. However, in most cases I can recover on my own without the need for antibiotics.

I’ve always told myself I wanted to go to the theoretical side of research, and not the side of applications. As such, I’ve always had this sort of understanding that “what people discover will eventually, somehow, find its way onto applications”, and thus never really cared a whole lot about this process.
During the talk, Prof. Christopher Alabi explained to us how, for several years after the discovery of penicillin, researchers attempted to scale up its production to make it more available and cheap. It was fun to learn how this came to be, to learn about important people who I had never heard of before (such as Margaret Rousseau, who developed the first penicillin deep-tank fermentation plant), and understand how deep-tank fermentation allowed penicillin to be so readily available.
However, it shocked me a bit when he explained how, if not for deep-tank fermentation, penicillin would have never left the laboratory. It shouldn’t have shocked me, but it did. Possibly because, although it’s extremely important, I had never heard about it before or about the story behind it, and only knew the part about penicillin’s first discovery. I only knew the “theory” side, but not the “applications” side of it, and so the mere idea of a disconnect between the two causing penicillin to never leave the laboratory is something I had never thought about before. I honestly find it to be a bit scary, and it makes me wonder about the kinds of scientific discoveries that never really left the laboratory shelves like penicillin did, and the kinds of discoveries that will still be left there.

The Rose Cafe event by chemical engineer Christopher Alabi was eye-opening because he talked about how it was better not to take antibiotics when a person got a cold or a virus. He explained that not many people knew that antibiotics may do more harm than good to cure a cold or virus. He recommended that we should let our bodies fight the infection if we meet the criteria for the healthy population. Otherwise, antibiotics should be reserved for the older population, very young population, and the weak population. Whenever I got sick, my mother would take me to the pediatrician and get prescribed medicine from the pharmacy. I was surprised because I thought a person would recover faster by taking medicine and resting. It made sense to me now that antibiotics might actually harm my immune system. I also learned the two types of infections: bacterial infection and viral infection. If a person had a bacterial infection and asked for an antibiotic, the physician would prescribe a broad spectrum antibiotic that wiped out all the bacteria especially the good bacteria. If a person had a viral infection, the person can get genetic testing only if the testing was offered by the hospital. Overall, I had a great time at the event and learned interesting information about antibiotics.

In Professor Alabi’s Rose Cafe, he discussed among other things the increasing danger posed by bacteria resistant to our antibiotics. As someone who has been dependent on intensive medical care my entire life, this is indeed worrying news. While my immune system is a strong as anyone’s, the thought that modern medicine could be undone by its own success is a terrifying one. Additionally, my mother is a doctor who, likely, prescribes the very antibiotics that are being rendered less effective by this phenomenon. This case does, however, raise some interesting potential questions. For example, should there be some sort of enforced reduction of the number of antibiotics prescribed to patients? Along what lines would such a reduction be drawn? While in general the answer to this question, for now, is probably quite easy, if the trend continues it might very well be possible that every single prescription given could make a significant difference. Should this situation ever arise, decisions would have to be made concerning who should receive these antibiotics, even at the expense of making everyone else’s infections harder to treat. These are quandaries I hope I never have to see.

This Wednesday at the Rose Cafe, we learned about how the world of pharmaceuticals and engineering come together to benefit society. As a pre-vet student, I have taken a lot of biology classes, and have been exposed the idea of bacteria and antibiotics before. However, I have never taken any engineering classes and I have never considered the role engineers played in developing drugs. I think it is important to recognize how different fields can come together and offer different skills and ways of thinking. It highlights the importance of teamwork and diverse thinking in the field of science. I was fascinated to learn about the history of antibiotics and the different pieces that made its development possible.

Another interesting topic of the discussion was antibiotic resistance. I think this is a very relevant issue as the development of antibiotics slows. The dangers of an infectious disease that has no cure is scary to think about, and it reminds us of the importance of continuing to research and discover new antibiotics. As was discussed at the Cafe, antibiotics are nowhere near as profitable as cancer research, and this is why advancements in the field have slowed. The future of antibiotics research may depend on federal funding. I think this is an important area of policy to consider, and it should receive more attention. Antibiotic resistance is a problem that could affect us all, but the problems associated with it could be prevented if we return attention to research to keep up with the evolution of bacteria.

Every time I get sick and it’s not just a fever or a cold, I always want to go to the doctor and get medicine. Throughout my life, my mom has always been reluctant to bring me, and for good reason. During this week’s Rose Café, I learned about the history of antibiotics and how resistance to them cannot be stopped, only slowed down. How? By not taking antibiotics (unless super necessary).

I found the talk to be very informative in terms of the history of antibiotics. It was interesting to learn that about compound 606, which was a synthetic drug used to treat syphilis. However, the drug is an arsenic compound and therefore toxic to humans. Later, penicillin, the first true antibiotic, supplemented it. Because the speaker is a chemical engineer, it was also fascinating how engineers play a role in antibiotics. In terms of antibiotic resistance, I felt like I always knew that resistance existed but I wasn’t sure why. I learned that it has only become a huge topic now because back then, antibiotics were being discovered at a quicker rate than the rate of resistance to the drugs. Nowadays, there isn’t much new discovery of new antibiotics so there has been signs of greater resistance.

I agree with the statement that we shouldn’t over sanitize – germs and bacteria are all around us and not all of it is harmful. I think if we always sterilize things, our body won’t have any defense against even small amounts of bacteria. Instead, we should be exposed to different types of bacteria in small amounts to grow an immunity to them. Our immune systems are strong at our young ages so we should be wary about taking antibiotics. Most of the time, we probably don’t need them.

Last night’s Rose Café provided me an introduction to a topic that I have never been exposed to before; antibiotics and some of its mechanisms that result in resistance. All aspects of the talk including the history of antibiotics and how resistance accumulates in the body were extremely informative topics to me. From a more familiar lens, while listening to the talk, I was reminded of how politics may play a role in how medical professionals may be “forced” to provide medication even when a patient’s conditions may be uncertain. For instance, if a medical professional is reluctant to give a patient treatment because of uncertainty in the patient’s symptoms, the patient could just switch hospitals and get alternative medical attention (which may not necessarily be better in the long run as a misdiagnosis could lead to unnecessary resistance). The entanglement of politics in the medical world is an extremely troubling task, especially when engineers produce medical treatment assuming that doctors fully understand a patient’s symptoms.

This Rose Cafe gave me the opportunity to look at a concept I already knew in a new light. Because I am pre-vet and studying in the sciences, I’ve taken many upper-level biology courses such as cell biology, microbiology, and organic chemistry, and biochemistry and thus have a fairly robust overview of the mechanisms of antibiotics and the pathways by which they work and can be overcome, resulting in resistance. Therefore, none of this information was new to me.

However, the information regarding the sociological and economic aspects of resistance were new to me and I found to be very enlightening. Specifically, the idea of kinetics regarding the burst in development of new drugs during a certain period and the ever-present power of evolution was a new concept I had never heard of. The idea of antibiotic innovation being funded and regulated by the government was also foreign to me, although it makes sense. Tragically, the scientific community is not typically very in tune with current issues in society, and vice versa. Creating more continuity and allowing science to guide policy is an ever-present goal that will only gain more poignancy as we make more advances in science and as a society.