Princeton University, New Jersey scientists have made a breakthrough discovery that could revolutionize antibiotic development: a new drug that acts like a “poison dart” to kill superbugs before they can develop resistance.
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Drug-resistant bacteria or superbugs are enough to keep everyone awake at night. Ever since Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, we have been relying more and more on antibiotics to fight bacterial infections. However, the short life cycle of bacteria makes them great at quickly becoming resistant to our best treatments – and if they do, the struggle for new “weapons” will have to start again.
And bacteria win the arms race. Superbugs are currently killing around 700,000 people worldwide each year and could overtake cancer mortality by 2050. Strains such as Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae are often resistant to most or all known antibiotics. These are both gram-negative bacteria that have an additional protective membrane that makes it more difficult to kill. For this reason, the World Health Organization has placed gram-negative bacteria on the top of its list “Priority” Pathogens and made Superbugs a critical issue for global human health.
Poison arrow
The new drug, whose technical name is SCH-79797, but has been called an “Irresistin”, has a double effect. First, it pierces the outer membrane of the bacteria. Second, it injects its charge; A toxic compound that destroys bacterial DNA, killing the cell.
The scientists tested Irresistin against Neisseria gonorrhoeae or super-gonorrhea, a wild strain of the venereal disease that is the third most common in the UK and is resistant to all known antibiotics. According to Professor Zemer Gitai, the main author of the paper, is super gonorrhea “Circulate in college.”
But Irresistin made short work of it both in the laboratory and in mice. The problem, however, was that Irresistin also killed human cells and was unsafe. That’s why the scientists developed an optimized form called Irresistin-16, which kills 1,000 bacteria for every human cell.
A lost art
The discovery of such drugs is a lost art – a new class of antibiotics against gram-negative bacteria has not been discovered since the 1960s. In the words of KC Huang, professor of microbiology at Stanford University, “Antibiotic research has stalled for many decades.”
So bugs have developed resistance to all of our antibiotics without anything new being developed to intervene. This was a one-way ticket that raced toward disaster. Hopefully the train will slow down if it doesn’t turn.
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