A New Antibiotic For Fighting Disease-Causing Bacteria

A New Antibiotic For Fighting Disease-Causing Bacteria.
Laboratory researchers nearly they've discovered a experimental antibiotic that could prove valuable in fighting disease-causing bacteria that no longer return to older, more frequently used drugs. The new antibiotic, teixobactin, has proven essential against a number of bacterial infections that have developed resistance to existing antibiotic drugs, researchers sign in in Jan 7, 2015 in the journal Nature. Researchers have used teixobactin to heal lab mice of MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), a bacterial infection that sickens 80000 Americans and kills 11000 every year, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The renewed antibiotic also worked against the bacteria that causes pneumococcal pneumonia. Cell taste tests also showed that the budding drug effectively killed off drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis, anthrax and Clostridium difficile, a bacteria that causes life-threatening diarrhea and is associated with 250000 infections and 14000 deaths in the United States each year, according to the CDC. "My view is that we will likely be in clinical trials three years from now," said the study's chief author, Kim Lewis, director of the Antimicrobial Discovery Center at Northeastern University in Boston.

Lewis said researchers are working to focus the redone antibiotic and make it more effective for use in humans. Dr Ambreen Khalil, an infectious disease professional at Staten Island University Hospital in New York City, said teixobactin "has the likely of being a valuable addition to a limited number of antibiotic options that are currently available". In particular, its effectiveness against MRSA "may be found to be critically significant".

And its potent activity against C difficile also "makes it a positive compound at this time". Most antibiotics are created from bacteria found in the soil, but only about 1 percent of these microorganisms will originate in petri dishes in laboratories. Because of this, it's become increasingly difficile to find new antibiotics in nature. The 1960s heralded the end of the approve era of antibiotic discovery, and synthetic antibiotics were unable to replace natural products, the authors said in offing notes.