Chemist Rachel Fuller Brown was born #OTD in 1898. She discovered the antifungal antibiotic nystatin while doing research for the NY State Department of Health, hence the name.
Rather than keep the profits from the drug, Brown (standing in the photo) and co-discoverer Elizabeth Hazen assigned nystatin’s patent royalties to the nonprofit Research Corporation of New York, to help support other researchers.
Image: Smithsonian Institution
@mcnees Nystatin is interesting in that it's not absorbed via the alimentary tract. This makes it particularly suitable for treatment of oral and throat fungal infections: the effect it has on the rest of the body is thus minimized.
This is similarly neat as the mechanism of delivery of azithromycin (it's taken up by phagocytes, which concentrate in inflamed areas, and release it there).
