Penicillin production, Japan

At Keio University, Sumio Umezawa initiated his lifelong work on the chemistry of antibiotics. His research began with processes for production of penicillin to comply with a request from the mihtaiy government In cooperation with his younger brother, Hamao, he achieved the first isolation of penicillin in Japan in... 

The Penicillin Committee became the nucleus of research and production of penicillin, and the efforts of many laboratories, including those of Morin-aga Confectionery, Banyu Pharmaceutical, and the Yamagata Union of Food Companies, brought penicillin into practical use in Japan, especially in the military, by the end of 1944, and many hopeless septicemia patients were... 

The use of biocatalysis for the production of chemicals started to receive serious interest in the 1960s with the development of immobilized aminoacylases for the production of chirally pure amino acids by Tanabe Seigaku of Japan, as well as the application of penicillin acylase for the production of 6-aminopenicillanic acid (6-APA), a key... 

By 1955, we had become aware of publications by K. Sakaguchi and S. Murao (1950) and by K. Kato (1953) relating to the apparent production of the nucleus of the penicillin molecule by P. chrysogenum, and a little later we corresponded with Dr. Kato about his work. It may now seem curious that these observations were not followed up in Japan, but this... 

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