Brotzu, Giuseppe

In 1948 Giuseppe Brotzu isolated the fungus Cephalosporium acremonium from a water sample collected off the coast of Sardinia. The culture showed significant antimicrobial activity, but Brotzu could not interest the Italian authorities in his discovery. He then turned to a friend in England for help, who... 

Briefly, the history of the evolution of cephalosporin antibiotics starts in 1945 with the isolation of Cephalosporium acremonium from seawater by Professor Giuseppe Brotzu at the University of Sardinia. This organism produced material with strong antibacterial activity, one of the components of which was later isolated and identified as cephalosporin C 1. This molecule showed relatively weak activity compared to penicillin however, it had two potentially useful properties ... 

Cephalosporins (Figure 3.10) are penicilHn-related group of antibiotics derived from cephalosporin C, 115a, an antibiotic isolated from a Cephalosporium acremonium strain by Giuseppe Brotzu in 1945. Its structure was elucidated by Newton and Abraham in 1961 [90]. Cephalosporins contain the 7-aminocephalosporanic acid nucleus (7-ACA), 115c that consists of a fused P-lactam-dihydrothiazine system, also known as cephem, with the lowest numbered position of the double bond being specified by prefixes (cephalosporins are 3-cephems or A -cephems) [91]. 

In 1948, an Italian, Professor Giuseppe Brotzu, by cultivating a microscopic fungus called Cephalosporium acremonium from lagoon sediment, discovered a new generation of antibiotics, the cephalosporins. At the time. World War II had just finished, penicillins had just appeared on the market, and it was noticed that the cephalosporins had a very similar structure (Abraham, 1983). 

Giuseppe Brotzu, a Glory of the Medical Faculty of the University of Gagliari. See also ... 

The introduction of the cephalosporins was a result of investigations in the mid-1940s by Giuseppe Brotzu who discovered that Cephalosporium acremonium, isolated for a sewage outfall, inhibited the growth of several bacterial species induding Salmonella typhus. The prototype of the cephalosporins, cephalosporin C, was subsequently... 

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