May 1, 1944
Dr. A.N. Richards
Committee on Medical Research
2101 Constitution Avenue
Washington, D.C.
Dear Dr. Richards:
This letter is in answer to yours of April 12th relating to our proposal for treatment of penicillin in such a way
as to increase its retention in the blood stream.
We have recently obtained some very interesting experimental results on the formation of complexes of substances
with serum protein, and Professor Campbell and I believe that it would be well worth while to try out these new methods, which
do not depend upon knowledge of the chemical structure, on penicillin and possibly other physiologically active substances,
without waiting for the release of information about the chemical structure of penicillin. I would like accordingly to make
application for a small contract, permitting one or two men to work on this problem during the coming six months in case that
your Committee considers the project promising. Would you please have a set of application blanks sent to me for this purpose?
If, later on, information about the chemical structure of penicillin were to be released to us, we could also try
out the chemical methods of coupling which seem appropriate.
Sincerely yours,
Linus Pauling
LP:mu
