Streptomycin is an antibiotic medication used to treat a number of bacterial infections, including tuberculosis, Mycobacterium avium complex, endocarditis, brucellosis, Burkholderia infection, plague, tularemia, and rat bite fever. For active tuberculosis it is often given together with isoniazid, rifampicin, and pyrazinamide. It is administered by injection into a vein or muscle.
Neomycin is an aminoglycoside antibiotic that displays bactericidal activity against gram-negative aerobic bacilli and some anaerobic bacilli where resistance has not yet arisen. It is generally not effective against gram-positive bacilli and anaerobic gram-negative bacilli. Neomycin comes in oral and topical formulations, including creams, ointments, and eyedrops. Neomycin belongs to the aminoglycoside class of antibiotics that contain two or more amino sugars connected by glycosidic bonds.
Selman Abraham Waksman was a Jewish Ukrainian-born American inventor, Nobel Prize laureate, biochemist and microbiologist whose research into the decomposition of organisms that live in soil enabled the discovery of streptomycin and several other antibiotics. A professor of biochemistry and microbiology at Rutgers University for four decades, he discovered several antibiotics, and he introduced procedures that have led to the development of many others. The proceeds earned from the licensing of his patents funded a foundation for microbiological research, which established the Waksman Institute of Microbiology located at the Rutgers University Busch Campus in Piscataway, New Jersey (USA). In 1952, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for "ingenious, systematic, and successful studies of the soil microbes that led to the discovery of streptomycin." Waksman and his foundation later were sued by Albert Schatz, one of his Ph.D. students and the discoverer of streptomycin, for minimizing Schatz's role in the discovery.
Albert Israel Schatz was an American microbiologist and academic who discovered streptomycin, the first antibiotic known to be effective for the treatment of tuberculosis. He graduated from Rutgers University in 1942 with a bachelor's degree in soil microbiology, and received his doctorate from Rutgers in 1945. His PhD research led directly to the discovery of streptomycin.
Richard Marc Losick is an American molecular biologist. He is the Maria Moors Cabot Professor of Biology at Harvard University, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. He is especially noted for his investigations of endospore formation in Gram positive organisms such as Bacillus subtilis.
Busch Campus is one of the five sub-campuses at Rutgers University's New Brunswick/Piscataway area campus, and is located entirely within Piscataway, New Jersey, US. Academic facilities and departments centered on this campus are primarily those related to the natural sciences: physics, pharmacy, engineering, psychology, mathematics and statistics, chemistry, geology, and biology. The Rutgers Medical School was also built on this campus in 1970, but a year later was separated by the state, renamed the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and merge with the New Jersey Medical School and other health profession schools in Newark and New Brunswick to create the College of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Rutgers and the medical school continued to share the land and facilities on the campus in a slightly irregular arrangement. On July 1, 2013, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School was officially merged back into Rutgers University, along with most of the other schools of UMDNJ, with the exception of the UMDNJ-School of Osteopathic Medicine.
Evelyn M. Witkin was an American bacterial geneticist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (1944–1955), SUNY Downstate Medical Center (1955–1971), and Rutgers University (1971–1991). Witkin was considered innovative and inspirational as a scientist, teacher and mentor.
Joachim Wilhelm "Jo" Messing was a German-American biologist who was a professor of molecular biology and the fourth director of the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University.
Streptomyces griseus is a species of bacteria in the genus Streptomyces commonly found in soil. A few strains have been also reported from deep-sea sediments. It is a Gram-positive bacterium with high GC content. Along with most other streptomycetes, S. griseus strains are well known producers of antibiotics and other such commercially significant secondary metabolites. These strains are known to be producers of 32 different structural types of bioactive compounds. Streptomycin, the first antibiotic ever reported from a bacterium, comes from strains of S. griseus. Recently, the whole genome sequence of one of its strains had been completed.
Norman Richard Pace Jr. is an American biochemist, and is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at the University of Colorado. He is principal investigator at the Pace lab.
The Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology is awarded by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences "in recognition of excellence in the field of microbiology." Named after Selman Waksman, it was first awarded in 1968. A $5000 prize is included in the honor.
Julian Edmund Davies is a British-born microbiologist and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of British Columbia.
Lucy Shapiro is an American developmental biologist. She is a professor of Developmental Biology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She is the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor of Cancer Research and the director of the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine.
Milton Wainwright is a British microbiologist who is known for his research into what he claims could be extraterrestrial life found in the stratosphere.
Xuemei Chen is a Chinese-American molecular biologist. She is the Furuta Chair Professor in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences at the University of California, Riverside. She was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2013.
Harold Boyd Woodruff was an American soil microbiologist and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Elizabeth Bugie Gregory was an American biochemist who co-discovered Streptomycin, the first antibiotic against Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Selman Waksman laboratory at Rutgers University. Waksman went on to win the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1952 and took the credit for the discovery.
Dorris Hutchison was an American scientist primarily known for her studies on the development of cancer chemotherapy drugs. Her work has been crucial for the advancement of new treatments for leukemia.
William Hugh Feldman was a doctor of veterinary medicine known for "world-renowned achievement in two distinct fields, veterinary pathology and chemotherapy of experimental tuberculosis." He also made important contributions to the treatment of leprosy.
Robert Lyman Starkey was an American microbiologist. He was the president of the American Society for Microbiology in 1963.
