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from the like-throwing-stars-but-smaller dept.
Tiny, star-shaped molecules are effective at killing bacteria that can no longer be killed by current antibiotics, new research shows.
The study, published today in Nature Microbiology, holds promise for a new treatment method against antibiotic-resistant bacteria (commonly known as superbugs).
The star-shaped structures, are short chains of proteins called 'peptide polymers', and were created by a team from the Melbourne School of Engineering.
...
tests undertaken on red blood cells showed that the star-shaped polymer dosage rate would need to be increased by a factor of greater than 100 to become toxic. The star-shaped peptide polymer is also effective in killing superbugs when tested in animal models.Furthermore, superbugs showed no signs of resistance against these peptide polymers. The team discovered that their star-shaped peptide polymers can kill bacteria with multiple pathways, unlike most antibiotics which kill with a single pathway.
Let's hope any such molecules are thoroughly vetted with long-term studies before being introduced to medical therapies.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jdavidb on Wednesday September 14 2016, @01:16AM
Let's hope any such molecules are thoroughly vetted with long-term studies before being introduced to medical therapies.
Let's hope people who need them can get them when they need them, too!
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Wednesday September 14 2016, @01:44AM
Sure, and I want a pony. When introduced to the U.S medical industry it will be sold for profit. That means that the people that need them, only get them if they have the money. Profit doesn't care about empathy or the needs of anyone. It only cares about growing in size.
What we need is a drug that can target psychotically avaricious people (parasites) and kill them with the same multiple pathways and abilities to defeat resistance.
Although I'm not really sure what the heck this stuff even is. The article doesn't say how they work at all, implies multiple pathways, and a single physical pathway in which the cell walls are ruptured (perhaps by the points on the star?).
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gravis on Wednesday September 14 2016, @01:50AM
Let's hope any such molecules are thoroughly vetted with long-term studies before being introduced to medical therapies.
so you would have millions of people with no recourse die because you are afraid of bad side effects? long-term studies are 10 years minimum, so yeah, millions will die in that time.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Wednesday September 14 2016, @02:53AM
That's why we need a kitchen-sink clause. Once a person becomes too ill, and still has informed consent or suitable decree, they can have the "kitchen sink" thrown at them. Literally. Bring in some new age people and throw a sink on them. At that point, what can hurt right? Probably the sink, but still. Give the dying a choice.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Wednesday September 14 2016, @07:31AM
Well, people do have the right to commit suicide (citation needed, but I found only restrictions reg. assisting in suicide). So, yes, if they thoroughly believe throwing a kitchr-sink at them helps, I beleive they should have that right, too, although society should probably offer psychological help instead.
The monetization is a different problem. If the industry overstates the chances of the new therapy based on current research, they should be liable.
Luckily the communist US government doesn't believe in the free market and will happily disown the health industry [archive.org] if it is in the best interest of The People, as was seen in the case of Tamiflu.
Oh, I forgot. This right is only invoked if the patent is owned by a non-US company and The People are US Americans (google for infringement cases in 3rd world countries, where people die because they can't afford the patented medicine). But since this development was done by the University of Melbourne, we might be lucky :-)
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday September 15 2016, @01:00AM
No. Offering that help only marginalizes the person and states that WE would feel better if they just talked about their pain till actually dying.
For some terminally ill patients, demanding they speak with a psychiatrist or psychologist before continuing does more to remove their autonomy and dignity then it does to provide them care and choice past a certain point. That kind of care is appropriate when there is hope.
Note, all of this is when the doctors have thrown up their hands, and you don't even have access to clinical trials. Assisted suicide is indeed a tricky position, but once the doctors have proclaimed they did everything, we need to step away and let the patient decide how they wish to die. Anything else just represents selfishness on our part due the difficult nature of dealing with death, and how we attempt to push it under the rug in America.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Thursday September 15 2016, @07:17PM
although society should probably offer psychological help instead.
No. Offering that help only marginalizes the person and states that WE would feel better if they just talked about their pain till actually dying.
Well, getting hit by a kitchen sink does not only sound bizarre, but also painful and pointless (because in most cases it might maim the body without being enough to kill). Therefore I think counselling a person who wants to put himself to such a pointless self-maiming is different from counselling someone who just has a severe death-wish. I'd advice the person probably to go for N20 instead, which should provide a painless death. Also, while I think the client should not be obliged to listen to any counselling session, society is obliged to offer them nevertheless.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday September 15 2016, @08:03PM
LOL, I didn't think we were talking about the literal kitchen sink! Sorry, I thought we were still talking in metaphors :)
Yeah, there should probably be a doctor in the room (or some voice of reason) before snorting drain cleaner or something. I meant when everything is said and done, and the doctors say to make preparations to "leave", that the person should be afforded their dignity and autonomy as much as possible. If you wish to offer the services, which is laudable, my only wish is that it not be mandated as a dependency before receiving assisted suicide. Apologies, I just see that as very similar to forcing a girl to speak with priests and psychologists before receiving an abortion. In those cases the intent to help is far less genuine, and is more about an attempt to bring the girl back into the moral comfort zone of some people. Just the same, when counseling someone that is highly likely to die quite soon, are we counseling them to provide comfort to us, or to them? That's my wish; To recognize that when speaking with them.
It sounds like we are in agreement anyways, just confused on the metaphors ;)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @04:05PM
Let's hope any such molecules are thoroughly vetted with long-term studies before being introduced to medical therapies.
so you would have millions of people with no recourse die because you are afraid of bad side effects? long-term studies are 10 years minimum, so yeah, millions will die in that time.
Right. What could possibly go wrong? Oh, wait... [wikipedia.org]
Your comment sounds very much like the "we need to do something, this is something, let's do it" type of kneejerk law passing which we always criticize here. See TSA, banning certain types of firearms, trying to ban encryption, etc.
I'll agree that people should have the ability to use whatever extreme, experimental, or quack medicine they want for themselves (assuming it doesn't harm others).
However, for something to become "introduced to medical therapies," that is to say, a commonly accepted medicine which is routinely used on the general public, it absolutely should go through proper scientific tests and rigor to make sure it does more good than harm. If it takes 10 years to gather the information to do that, then so be it. If that delay causes millions who are currently dying to not be saved (a estimate which sounds extremely high to me), then so be it... although see my previous paragraph as well in regard to free will.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Wednesday September 14 2016, @02:43AM
Anyone have any idea what the active lifespan for these molecules is? Are they destroyed in the process of killing the bacteria? By the human metabolism? Environmental exposure after excretion (UV? chemical?)?
These sound like they're taking a very different approach to previous antibiotics, and if they don't rapidly break down then I don't care if these things are the miracle drug that ends all bacterial disease for all time, they could be far too dangerous to use on public-health scales. Bacteria are the foundation upon which our ecology is built - wipe them out, and the rest of life on Earth isn't far behind.
Such fears are probably unjustified, and one would hope that such things would be considered before being deployed on a large scale - but I have little faith in the current system to do so. The inventors are likely to be far too blinded by their success, and the regulatory bureaucracy only concerned with efficacy and immediate risk to human life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @03:01AM
Bacteria are the foundation upon which our ecology is built - wipe them out, and the rest of life on Earth isn't far behind.
And nothing of value would be lost.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @01:08PM
Cheese... cheese will be lost.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday September 14 2016, @10:00AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday September 14 2016, @03:03PM
That's... not how evolution works. Yes, there's probably bacteria out there somewhere that have the genes to resist most naturally occuring antibiotics, but it's fairly rare that those genes get into disease-causing bacteria through horizontal gene transfer (i.e. the resistant bacteria giving their genes to the unrelated disease-causing bacteria). Evidence is strong that the resistance in can arise through spontaneous mutations over relatively short time-frames - one of the benefits of belonging to a species that can go through a dozen generations per day.
Put that in perspective: in one year bacteria can evolve as much as humans do in 87,600 years (assuming an average 20 yeas per human generation). And if a single bacteria survives exposure to an antibiotic, a day later it can have 4096 descendants. Consider that next time you use one of those antibacterial soap that "kills out 99.98% of germs" - by the same time tomorrow you may have just as many bacteria as you started with, but now they'll be descended from the ones that managed to survive the first exposure. Bet you you don't manage to kill 99.98% of them a second time...
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday September 14 2016, @06:12PM
Sorry, but a lot of bacterial evolution *does* work that way. And even some non-bacterial evolution, though not much.
Bacteria share genes rather freely, and they don't respect species boundaries. And occasionally you get something really weird because of that. Did you know that pea plants secrete hemoglobin in their rootlets? Hemoglobin is such a unique molecule that the only reasonable way for it to have gotten to pea plants is if a bacterium (or virus) picked it up from a chordate (I'm not a biochemist, so I don't know which branch of chordata would be involved, but it could probably be narrowed down quite a bit, possibly as much as "some ancestor of modern canines".), and then infected a pea plant ancestor and embedded the genes it had borrowed into the hereditary line. Now *THAT'S* unusual. But bacteria share genes among themselves all the time. So the grandparent's argument is valid, if not the only possibility.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday September 15 2016, @03:32AM
No argument that it can happen that way, but it doesn't exactly take a long time for it to happen through more traditional mutation-based evolution either.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday September 15 2016, @06:45PM
No argument that it can happen that way, but it doesn't exactly take a long time for it to happen through more traditional mutation-based evolution either.
That's probably true, but given how pervasive the genetic exchange is, it's not clear how to estimate time to adapt to a feature that nothing has previously encountered. My guess would be the same as yours (not long), but my certainty would be a lot lower.
That said, it didn't take long before SOME bug figured out how to eat polystyrene. But nothing yet has figured out how to make a living doing it (probably because of the lack of water). So it's not clear how long it will be before something evolves to eat these things. It's possible that there's no easy way from here to there. Basalt has proven relatively immune to bacteriological degradation for millennia.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @04:21AM
How do they work exactly, and why don't they also mess up human cells, which in many ways are similar to bacteria.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Bogsnoticus on Wednesday September 14 2016, @06:55AM
Now, if they can only find ninjas small enough to be able to throw these stars at the bacterium, we'll be set.
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @04:22PM
you, sir, are a funny ninja!