Inspired by viruses that attack and kill bacteria, researchers at The Rockefeller University have created an entirely new weapon against disease-causing bacteria that shows great promise for treating drug-resistant infections.
In work described in the Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences on April 17, the team engineered molecules that accomplish something viruses do much better than the human immune system; namely, targeting specific carbohydrate molecules that appear on the surfaces of bacterial cells.
"Bacteria-infecting viruses have molecules that recognize and tightly bind to these common components of the bacterial cell's surface that the human immune system largely misses. We have co-opted these molecules, and we've put them to work helping the human immune system fight off microbial pathogens," says Vincent A. Fischetti, head of the Laboratory of Bacterial Pathogenesis and Immunology.
In experiments with mice, Fischetti's team used this approach to successfully treat life-threatening infections by MRSA, a bacterium that is resistant to conventional antibiotics—results that suggest they may have found a new way to fight superbugs like MRSA.
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University of Sheffield and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) scientists have discovered several new related (dinuclear RuII) compounds which visualize and kill gram-negative bacteria, such as E. coli (note - no word on whether it works on synthetic E.coli)
Bacteria are classified generally by what type of staining works on them using a method developed in the 1800's by Hans Christian Gram. 'Gram-negative' bacteria retain a stain color that shows them as a pinkish red coloring, these bacteria have cell walls that make it difficult to get drugs into them and many gram-negative bacteria have become significantly or even completely resistant to available drug treatments.
A new drug in the difficult gram-negative space is particularly important. Drug resistant bacteria already cause the deaths of over 50 thousand people a year in the US and EU alone, and as many as 10 million people a year could die worldwide every year by 2050 due to antibiotic resistant infections.
Doctors have not had a new treatment for gram-negative bacteria in the last 50 years, and no potential drugs have entered clinical trials since 2010.
The new drug compound has a range of exciting opportunities. As Professor Jim Thomas explains: "As the compound is luminescent it glows when exposed to light. This means the uptake and effect on bacteria can be followed by the advanced microscope techniques available at RAL.
"This breakthrough could lead to vital new treatments to life-threatening superbugs and the growing risk posed by antimicrobial resistance."
The studies at Sheffield and RAL have shown the compound seems to have several modes of action, making it more difficult for resistance to emerge in the bacteria.
Better yet
Mammalian cell culture and animal model studies indicate that the complex is not toxic to eukaryotes, even at concentrations that are several orders of magnitude higher than its minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC).
The researchers plan to test the compounds against additional multi drug resistant bacteria next.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Gaaark on Tuesday April 18 2017, @06:58PM (3 children)
expose those mice to a bigger population of mice and see what happens...
...does this 'approach' cause the other mice to become super resistant to viruses... do their viruses become super resistant?
Do THEIR super resistan viruses become SUPER-ORANGE-SMALL-HAND-RESISTANT to EVERYTHING........
Will this make everything worse?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Gaaark on Tuesday April 18 2017, @07:00PM (1 child)
frist post!@!!OMG!!@!@@!@
OOOOOMMMMMGGGGGG!!!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18 2017, @07:13PM
This one time, at SN camp, a dude got so frucking drunk, he sucked his own duck;
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18 2017, @08:19PM
The initial post shouldn't be marked offtopic...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18 2017, @07:53PM
This is definitely cool, and great approach.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18 2017, @08:14PM (2 children)
i dont know, but i believe these viruses are called "bacteriophages"?
also it is short sighted to say "attack and kill bacteria" when in reality they "eat" blond small handed bacteria to make more chinese viruses. tho there is a dispute if a non living entity like a virus is alive and thus can eat ... stuff.
on a side note: growing up and living in non 3rd world countries mega cities i always wondered, after getting a more or less premium 1st world contry education, why hacker stales and bad sanitation didnt regularly kill swats of the mega city population. in reality it seems, that if there is too much blond small handed bacteria, it is ripe for the nifty chinese viruses to just decimate a large swat of trieving and lazy bacteria and thus keep the overall profit generating cement growing human population more or less ... healthy or less prone to be bacteria infected?
side note two: wat happend to all the string and m-theory news we were getting a few years back? has it been solved and are we getting better magnetic fields, refridgerators and 9 dimensional micro mega wave "ovens"?. did i miss something?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 18 2017, @09:15PM (1 child)
I think your first paragraph is the well known "The CIA created AIDS to kill all the Africans".
The second question about string theory is it never got past the speculative math theory world, can't find anything that is testable, very "how many angels dance on a head of pin" type of thing so they've mostly faded out other than pseudoscience books, the same kind of thing selling pyramid power and crystal chakra healing or whatever.
Historically physics and math are never far apart but string theory is an example of geometric speculation that appears to have no connection at all with reality. Oh well. I mean the orbit of Jupiter is still cool even if it has no impact on my personality or likelihood of getting laid tonight.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18 2017, @10:43PM
but but i thought the CIA is a secret brotherhood of priests worshipping jupiter? and, they get all the venus they want ... thus the real lover is a misfit with slited eyes called hephestos and he knows how to use a hammer ...
(Score: 3, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday April 18 2017, @11:14PM
Seriously, it's almost all nonsense. I've seen all those words but never in those combinations?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday April 19 2017, @02:03AM
This approach is old, the results are not. What remains is to make a product out of it.
There are three approaches to getting rid of various drug resistant bacteria:
* Engineered virus that infect bacteria (as in the article)
* Macrophages, bacteria that eat other bacteria.
* Chemical signal disruption by misleading the signals between hostile bacteria.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19 2017, @09:59PM
Why do we never hear about Engineers scientisting stuff? It's blatant elitism. I've dad enough of "experts" USA USA USA.