Two scientists fought fungi that kill

Press, 21 June 1984, Page 10

Two scientists fought fungi that kill

Landmark discoveries in medicine usually result in world-wide acclaim for the scientists concerned. We think of Alexander Fleming, with his penicillin; Jonas Salk, with the polio vaccine; Christian Barnard and heart transplants. Yet the two American scientists who developed nystatin, an anti-fungal wonder drug, are completely unknown to the public.

A microbiologist, Elizabeth Hazen (1885-1975) and an organic chemist, Rachel Brown (1898-1980), worked for the New York State Department of Health. They tested more than 48,000 soil samples before discovering an unknown anti-fungal oresm. This they refined to me nystatin (named for New York state).

Their decision to license the manufacture of nystatin through a non-profit research foundation enabled millions of dollars in royalties to go towards funding research on the different pathogenic fungi. These fungi though normally harmless, can invade and incapacitate susceptible individuals.

Not only human beings have benefited from nystatin, it is also used to preserve art works and books in danger of decay or mildew.

It saved thousands of works of art soaked in the disastrous floods in Florence, Italy, in 1966. It is also being used to arrest the Dutch elm disease.

Apart from conditions like ringworm, athlete’s foot, and vaginal thrush, there is little public knowledge of the various fungal pathogens which can invade the human body.

Some of these are regional. Some occur widely.

Wherever they are, people are in contact with them daily. Every cubic metre of air, whether Christchurch smog or country-fresh, carries about three million life forms — infinitesimally minute viruses, enzymes, tetanus, bacteria of every type, various forms of gametic material from plants, fungal spores. Healthy human beings breathe this living soup all

their lives without catching more than an occasional sniffle or minor infection. But for those whose immune systems are depleted, whose skins are chronically ulcerated, whose lungs are unhealthy, whose guts may be decaying, a normally harmless pathogen may suddenly turn nasty. Of these opportunistic pathogens, the fungal mycoses are perhaps the nastiest, producing a variety

of serious symptoms that are often difficult to diagnose, and may be extremely difficult to cure. These are fungal infections which get right into the body, lodging first in the respiratory tract, and then invading other parts, particularly the intestines, and the warm female nooks and crannies. Conditions come with tongue-twisting names like candidiasis, cocci-

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dioimycosis, blastomycosis, histoplasmosis, cryptococcosis, aspergillosis and the actinomy coses. Nasty diseases, but fortunately rare. Even so, back in the ’forties Brown and Hazen were concerned by the toxicity and limited effectiveness of preparations used to treat them.

They started working on an anti-fungal project in 1948, discovering the organism that was the basis for nystatin in 1949. The nystatin patent was issued in 1951. All rights were given to the Research Corporation, a non-profit private foundation that specialised in patenting, licensing, and defending scientific inventions, and in distributing royalties. The corporation arranged for nystatin to be manufactured initially by Squibb and Sons, with royalties being ploughed back into research programmes selected by a special Brown-Hazen Fund Committee.

The Brown-Hazen Fund ran till 1977, distributing many millions of dollars to fund mycological, microbiological, and specific types of cancer research. It built laboratories, purchased equipment, provided many scholarships and special positions in research and medical organisations. Not a cent from the sales of nystatin went to Rachel Brown and Elizabeth Hazen, so adamant were they that they should not benefit personally from their own invention.

Despite the Fund making many travel grants for scientists, these two remarkable women paid their own travel expenses — even

JACQUELINE STEINCAMP

when connected with the use or development of nystatin.

In 1957, when Rachel Brown was elected a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences, Averill Harriman, then the state governor, sent her a congratulatory letter. “You are one of the reasons that the New York State Health Department is a leader in public health in the world,” he said. A 1965 article in the “New York Journal” cited Brown and Hazen, along with the film actress Hedy Lemarr, as among the very tiny percentage of women to whom U.S. patents had been issued. (Hedy Lamarr’s was for an anti-jamming radio device which she patented just before World War II). The article stated that before 1923, about two per cent of U.S. patents were issued to women; an average of 1 per cent had been issued since that date. In their later years, Rachel Brown and Elizabeth Hazen became concerned by the decreasing numbers of women scientists applying for grants.

The grants programme had made a particular effort to attract women scientists, but had little response. In the final year of the Brown-Hazen Fund, major grants were made to two women’s colleges to advance the studies of women in science.

Although fungal infections are a minor health threat compared with cancer, heart disease, and strokes, their increasing incidence reflects the dark side of antibiotics, and treatments for malignant disorders.

These often weaken the defence mechanisms that prevent infections. In New Zealand in 1980, there were only four deaths from all the mycoses. In 1982, 44 people were hospitalised with candidiasis (30 women and 14 men); and 19 (10 women and nine men) with other mycoses. There are no records on the numbers treated by doctors for thrush, and for fungal conditions of the skin.

Small numbers indeed. But every one of them can be grateful to Brown and Hazen.