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: 3, Informative) by Guppy on Friday June 16 2017, @11:26PM
A couple of comments. First, this antibiotic is active against both gram positive and gram negatives, and I would expect it to be active against many atypicals as well, such as mycoplasmas. That's good, the antibiotic resistance crunch is especially a problem for gram negatives right now.
Second, it's a nucleoside analogue. That is definitely a bit unusual for an anti-bacterial agent (although there are many nucleoside antivirals and at least one nucleoside antifungal). If approvable it will be the first of its class. However, that also makes me a bit cautious about it's chances of getting through clinical trials. Antibiotic development is a hard slog, both for technical and economic reasons (and sometimes what I suspect are other un-necessary reasons, unfortunately).
Pre-print available without firewall here: http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/02/08/106906 [biorxiv.org]