SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Scientists from Rutgers University-New Brunswick, the biotechnology company NAICONS Srl., and elsewhere have discovered a new antibiotic effective against drug-resistant bacteria: pseudouridimycin. The new antibiotic is produced by a microbe found in a soil sample collected in Italy and was discovered by screening microbes from soil samples. The new antibiotic kills a broad spectrum of drug-sensitive and drug-resistant bacteria in a test tube and cures bacterial infections in mice.
In a paper published in Cell today, the researchers report the discovery and the new antibiotic's mechanism of action.
Pseudouridimycin inhibits bacterial RNA polymerase, the enzyme responsible for bacterial RNA synthesis, through a binding site and mechanism that differ from those of rifampin, a currently used antibacterial drug that inhibits the enzyme. Because pseudouridimycin inhibits through a different binding site and mechanism than rifampin, pseudouridimycin exhibits no cross-resistance with rifampin, functions additively when co-administered by rifampin and, most important, has a spontaneous resistance rate that is just one-tenth the spontaneous resistance rate of rifampin.
Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170615142842.htm
Journal reference: Sonia I. Maffioli, et. al. Antibacterial Nucleoside-Analog Inhibitor of Bacterial RNA Polymerase. Cell, 2017; 169 (7): 1240 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2017.05.042
(Score: 4, Insightful) by kaszz on Friday June 16 2017, @07:37PM (2 children)
Now we can replace the anti-biotic that we pump pigs full with so we can treat them like shit and make cheap hamburgers.. and pr0fit!
And our supplier will be happy to feed the local environment with the drug. Waste cleaning is just another expense.
So in a few years this medicament will be wasted too. I'll propose to license the drug only to entities that won't act recklessly.
Not completing the cure is another bad use.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @10:21PM (1 child)
Good luck getting China and other countries on board. We can only hope it's genuinely expensive to make, not fake expensive due to the 1000% profit margin.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday June 17 2017, @10:34AM
Make the drug in another country and don't share the manufacturing engineering with anyone?