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
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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) by frojack on Friday June 16 2017, @06:50PM (1 child)
Probably not effective for long.
They already document a spontaneous resistance rate. Those rates always start out low and tend to ramp up with wide spread usage.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(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.
(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?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday June 16 2017, @08:35PM
I think the days of using just antibiotics are over. We need to switch to some kind of combined therapy to prevent resistance from being a problem.
I am not even undergraduate-educated in molecular medicine, so this may be completely nuts, but one idea i had for dealing with the beta-lactamase-producing resistant strains is to flood the body with a large amount of something with beta-lactam rings but no actual antibiotic activity, wait for the bugs to run outta enzyme, and *then* give the antibiotic. Anyone here know if that would work? If someone like me can think of it, odds are it's been tried and found lacking...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(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]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @11:36PM (2 children)
Maybe there is something to the urge that many kids have to eat some dirt?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @12:58AM (1 child)
I would not be surprised if the itch of teething was behind that.
However, I remain convinced that all this concern over sanitation is overblown, and likely causing more harm than good for the same reason the anti-vaxxers are diluting "herd resistance" by introducing susceptible elements. I believe I was designed for the environment I am in, and that includes a bit of dirt now and then. The fastidious hand-washing seems more for social diseases, which spread through contact. And we do seem to have a thing for spreading stuff via the social protocol of hand-shaking and mutually handling various items. ( like at the gas pump, or cash ).
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday June 17 2017, @10:38AM
Which is why it's a good idea to clean your hands after dealing with pathogen exchanges like keypads, gas pumps, door knobs and handshaking. And another cleaning before handling food.