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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @08:16PM
Depends on how it is used and what are the fitness costs for resistance.
Before we can really speak about any of that, the drug has to be tested in humans.