Enzyme inhibitor boosts immune system to fight MRSA and other dangerous skin infections
In what turned out to be one of the most important accidents of all time, Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming returned to his laboratory after a vacation in 1928 to find a clear zone surrounding a piece of mold that had infiltrated a petri dish full of Staphylococcus aureus (
S. aureus), a common skin bacterium he was growing.
That region of no bacterial growth was the unplanned birth of a medical miracle, penicillin, and would lead to the era of antibiotics. Now, in a paper published today in the journal