Question: What steps are taken to make antibiotics and prevent them from being contaminated.

Laura Haworth answered on 16 Mar 2016:

It takes a long time for an antibiotic to be developed and before it can be used on a human being. It involves lots of steps testing if it is safe and does what it should. Thus can take many years and lots and lots of money.
Antibiotics are made from living organisms such as fungi, moulds, and certain soil bacteria that are harmful to disease-causing bacteria. They can also be produced synthetically (artificially) or combined with natural substances to form semi-synthetic antibiotics.
When an antibiotic is made by a living organism the process is known as biosynthesis It is actually the organisms themselves that make the antibiotic. The lab is is made just provides favourable conditions for the organisms to multiply, and then the drug can be extracted.
Although most antibiotics occur in nature, they are not normally available in the quantities necessary for large-scale production. For this reason, a fermentation process was developed. It involves isolating a desired micro-organism, encouraging growth of the culture and refining and isolating the final antibiotic product. It is important that sterile conditions be maintained throughout the manufacturing process, because contamination by foreign microbes will ruin the fermentation.