Viral antibiotic re-engineered in order to fight superbugs
Scientists in the USA have managed to re-engineer a viral antibiotic they can use in order to fight superbugs, BBC News reports.
The scientists managed to develop a new version of vancomycin and designed it to be ultra-tough, making strategic modifications to the molecular structure. More specifically, the antibiotic is now a thousand times more potent than the former drug.
It turns out that this new version is able to fight bacteria in three different ways, making it much less likely that the superbugs can avoid the attack.
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The new antibiotic is yet to be tested on either animals or humans, with the Scripps Research Institute team hoping to make it available in five years.
Scientists are hoping to use this new version of the antibiotic to fight the vancomycin-resistant enterococci or VRE, which is one hard-to-treat infection. VRE, found in hospitals, can lead to dangerous infections in the wounds and bloodstream.
“We made one change to the molecule vancomycin that overcomes what is the present resistance to vancomycin. And then we added to the molecule, two small changes that built into the molecule, two additional ways in which it can kill bacteria. So the antibiotic has three different, we call them ‘mechanisms’, by which it kills bacteria. And resistance to such an antibiotic would be very difficult to emerge. So it’s a molecule designed specifically to address the emergence of resistance,” lead researcher Dr Dale Boger explains.
“Organisms just can’t simultaneously work to find a way around three independent mechanisms of action. Even if they found a solution to one of those, the organisms would still be killed by the other two. Doctors could use this modified form of vancomycin without fear of resistance emerging,” he concluded.
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