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New Direction. Waksman gives full credit to Dubos for inspiring him to change the direction of his work. The new direction was obvious: penicillin is mainly active against a particular group of bacteria. The next job was to find another substance which would be active against other bacteria—against the smaller rickettsias (which cause typhus) or the even smaller viruses which cause such diseases as polio and influenza.
Waksman and his research associates tested thousands of cultures. They could have found promising molds and other organisms in the air, in sewage or in garbage, but they went to the soil.
Time & again, Waksman and his assistants felt that success was in sight. Most of their antibiotics were poisonous. Only one of a series of six showed any promise of being useful in the human body. They tried the 1915 culture of Streptomyces griseus and it produced nothing.
Then a Jersey poultryman brought a sick chicken to the poultry pathologist at Rutgers for a diagnosis. Nothing, it seemed, could have had less to do with the search for antibiotics. But in a culture taken from the chicken's gizzard a white spot appeared which looked like a colony of Waksman's favorite microbes. Dr. Frederick Beaudette sent it to his colleague Waksman across the campus. The culture grew well, and in growing it produced a deadly germ-killer. Once again, hopes rose.
This time, hope was rewarded. Within two days, both the chicken culture and a similar culture from heavily manured soil produced the same antibiotic. Both organisms proved to be Streptomyces griseus. The two 1943 strains* were potent, while the 1915 strain had failed.
New Hope. Waksman called his seventh antibiotic streptomycin and rejoiced in a quiet way when it worked against many germs which resist penicillin. Though more toxic than penicillin, it was not too toxic to use. Streptomycin worked in the test tube against one of the most stubborn of all disease germs: the tubercle bacillus. But so did many another substance which was of no use in treating tuberculosis in humans. Waksman did not yet dare hope that he had found a cure.
Merck & Co. (which had financed fellowships in Waksman's department and had exclusive rights to streptomycin) soon turned out enough of the new drug for extensive tests. Almost a year after its discovery, Waksman suggested that it might have some value in tuberculosis. Successful tests on guinea pigs followed quickly, and the first tests on humans clinched it. Streptomycin was what the doctors had been looking for: the first drug to work at all against tuberculosis, which still ranks seventh among the killing diseases; between ages 15 and 35 it ranks first. For perhaps 25% of the 500,000 U.S. victims, streptomycin offers new hope.
When streptomycin began to grow into a $40 million-a-year business, it was clear that both Rutgers and Merck could be embarrassed by the exclusive arrangement between them. But Merck, too, was liberal. The company gave up its exclusive contract, but Rutgers agreed to refund the first $500,000 of royalties toward Merck's outlay in commercializing streptomycin. More than $400,000 has already been repaid.