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posted by LaminatorX on Sunday January 11 2015, @04:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the dust-to-dust dept.

Drug resistant strains of many diseases are emerging faster than new antibiotics can be made to fight them with drug-resistant bacteria infecting at least two million people a year in the United States and killing 23,000. Now Denise Grady reports at the NYT that scientists have developed a new method, which extracts drugs from bacteria that live in dirt, that has yielded a powerful new antibiotic, teixobactin, that was tested in mice and easily cured severe infections, with no side effects. Better still, the drug works in a way that makes it very unlikely that bacteria will become resistant to it. And the method developed to produce the drug has the potential to unlock a trove of natural compounds to fight infections and cancer — molecules that were previously beyond scientists’ reach because the microbes that produce them could not be grown in the laboratory.

The new research is based on the premise that everything on earth — plants, soil, people, animals — is teeming with microbes that compete fiercely to survive. Trying to keep one another in check, the microbes secrete biological weapons: antibiotics. “The way bacteria multiply, if there weren’t natural mechanisms to limit their growth, they would have covered the planet and eaten us all eons ago,” says Dr. William Schaffner. The problem is that about 99 percent of the microbial species in the environment are bacteria that do not grow under usual laboratory conditions (PDF). But the researchers have found a way to grow them using a process that involves diluting a soil sample and placing it on specialized equipment. Then, the secret to success is putting the equipment into a box full of the same soil that the sample came from. “Essentially, we’re tricking the bacteria,” says Dr. Kim Lewis. Back in their native dirt, they divide and grow into colonies. Once the colonies form, the bacteria are “domesticated,” and researchers can scoop them up and start growing them in petri dishes in the laboratory.

Experts not involved with the research say the technique for isolating the drug had great potential. They also say teixobactin looked promising, but expressed caution because it has not yet been tested in humans. “What most excites me is the tantalizing prospect that this discovery is just the tip of the iceberg,” says Mark Woolhouse. “It may be that we will find more, perhaps many more, antibiotics using these latest techniques.”

 
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  • (Score: 2) by SuperCharlie on Sunday January 11 2015, @05:16PM

    by SuperCharlie (2939) on Sunday January 11 2015, @05:16PM (#133732)

    A while back I read a story about how working in dirt with your hands, like gardening, would help immune system, etc, because of microorganisms and such. This seems like the next logical step. Funny how all the medical technology we have and we get back to dirt as a savior.

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  • (Score: -1) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 11 2015, @05:35PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 11 2015, @05:35PM (#133735)

    >Funny how all the medical technology we have and we get back to dirt as a savior.
    No it isn't.

  • (Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Sunday January 11 2015, @05:47PM

    by opinionated_science (4031) on Sunday January 11 2015, @05:47PM (#133740)

    This is phenomenally bad advice, except when it isn't.
    Our immune systems only need to be good enough for us to reproduce - everything else is just our good fortune...

    The microbial world evolved before we did ,and will be around long after we become extinct. Not really a surprise to find antibiotics in the dirt...I suspect the profit margin is large enough.

    The REALLY cool thing here is the culturing of isolates - this really is neat. The second notable point is the targeting of membranes, they are chemically distinct.

    • (Score: 1) by VitalMoss on Monday January 12 2015, @07:58PM

      by VitalMoss (3789) on Monday January 12 2015, @07:58PM (#134141)

      I remember listening to an informative speech on dirt. The speak made a pointed statement about the healing properties of dirt, but that we should avoid using it because of "our current medical advancements"

      Kinda funny that this comes up now.