Pharmaceutical history - April 25th - Félix d'Hérelle

Félix d'Hérelle(25 April 1873 – 22 February 1949) was a French-Canadian microbiologist. He was co-discoverer of bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria) and experimented with the possibility of phage therapy. D'Herelle has also been credited for his contributions to the larger concept of applied microbiology.

Bacteriophages, also known as phages, are viruses that infect and replicate only in bacterial cells. They are ubiquitous in the environment and are recognized as the most abundant biological agent on earth. They are extremely diverse in size, morphology, and genomic organization.

In 1915, British bacteriologist Frederick Twort, superintendent of the Brown Institution of London, discovered a small agent that infected and killed bacteria. He believed the agent must be one of the following:

-a stage in the life cycle of the bacteria

-an enzyme produced by the bacteria themselves, or

-a virus that grew on and destroyed the bacteria

Twort's research was interrupted by the onset of World War I, as well as a shortage of funding and the discoveries of antibiotics.

Independently, French-Canadian microbiologist Félix d'Hérelle, working at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, announced on 3 September 1917, that he had discovered "an invisible, antagonistic microbe of the dysentery bacillus". For d’Hérelle, there was no question as to the nature of his discovery: "In a flash I had understood: what caused my clear spots was in fact an invisible microbe … a virus parasitic on bacteria." D'Hérelle called the virus a bacteriophage, a bacteria-eater (from the Greek phagein meaning "to devour").

More than a half a century later, in 1969, Max Delbrück, Alfred Hershey, and Salvador Luria were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of the replication of viruses and their genetic structure.

Source: -Kasman LM, Porter LD. Bacteriophages. [Updated 2019 Aug 12]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2020 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493185/
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriophage#History
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Félix_d%27Herelle
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