Scientists have discovered a new class of antibiotics that can kill a wide range of dangerous, drug-resistant bacteria.
Moreover, in lab experiments, bacteria didn’t develop resistance to the new drug, called teixobactin, and in fact may need several decades to do so because of the drug’s special mode of action, the researchers said.
“Teixobactin is a promising therapeutic candidate; it is effective against drug-resistant pathogens in a number of animal models of infection,” the researchers wrote in their report.
The problem of drug-resistant bacteria is a serious public health threat, and finding new antibiotics to tackle resistant bacteria is a difficult job. Existing methods for isolating promising compounds from bacterial cultures often turn up only the types of antibiotics already in use, according to the study.
In the new study, however, the researchers developed fresh methods to find antibiotics. They studied 10,000 strains of bacteria that live in the soil, and grew them in their natural habitat. The researchers then isolated compounds made by the bacteria and tested them against disease-causing bacteria.
The new antibiotic, named teixobactin, was one of those compounds. In experiments in mice, the researchers showed teixobactin was effective in treating animals infected with bacteria such as Mycobacterium tuberculous (which causes tuberculosis) and Staphylococcus aureus (which can infect people’s skin and other tissues). Some strains of these bacteria are already resistant to one or more of antibiotics, making infections extremely difficult to treat in people……..
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CREDIT: CDC/Dr. Ray Butler