LONDON: Researchers have developed two new antibiotics that are effective against multi-resistant bacteria, and also appear not to trigger resistance when used to treat infection in mice.
The research, published in the journal PLOS Biology, could bring both fresh impetus and new possibilities for fighting antibiotic resistance worldwide.
Antibiotics have saved so many lives over the previous century of their use in humans that they are considered to be one of the major breakthroughs of contemporary medicine, said researchers from the University of Rennes 1 in France.
Growing resistance is gradually rendering them ineffective, with the threat of catastrophic public health consequences should this trend continue much longer, they said.
The few new antibiotics being brought to market essentially consist of so-called me-too drugs — meaning that they are derived from existing classes of antibiotics.
Researchers identified a new bacterial toxin which they transformed into potent antibiotics active against various bacteria responsible for human infections, whether Gram-positive or negative.
“It all started with a fundamental discovery made in 2011,” said Brice Felden, Director of the Bacterial Regulatory RNAs and Medicine laboratory in Rennes. (AGENCIES)
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