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Ampicillin Ampicillin is a prescription drug used to treat bacterial infections. It is in the Antibiotic/Anti-infective drug family known as the Penicillins. Ampicillin is prescribed less frequently today than in the past because of advances in chemical engineering, though many of the most commonly prescribed penicillin-like drugs used today are analogues of Ampicillin. Like the other antibiotics in the Penicillin family, Ampicillin works by inhibiting synthesis of products used for construction of the bacterial …

…and consequently, destroys its function as an antibiotic. Ampicillin has a dipolar nature, which affects the uptake of the molecule in the gut. But advances in the subsequent years after introduction led to a solution to this problem. In 1964, amoxicillin, ampicillin's phenolic analogue, was released and largely overcame this problem. Figure 1: Chemical structure of Ampicillin (233) and Amoxycillin (234). Figure 2: Structure of the 6-aminopenicillanic acid as found in the penicillin molecule. Works Cited Columbia Encyclopedia Merck Index