Hospitals, Pharma

Promising antibiotic solution found in dirt – yes, dirt

It’s no news that antibiotic resistance has been a troubling situation that researchers are desperately […]

It’s no news that antibiotic resistance has been a troubling situation that researchers are desperately trying to find solutions to. There have not been many new antibiotics created to fill in the gaps over the years, but it turns out some research could change the game with the help of dirt.

The New York Times reports:

The method, which extracts drugs from bacteria that live in dirt, has yielded a powerful new antibiotic, researchers reported in the journal Nature on Wednesday. The new drug, teixobactin, was tested in mice and easily cured severe infections, with no side effects.

Better still, the researchers said, 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.

Kim Lewis, the senior author of the article and director of the Antimicrobial Discovery Center at Northeastern University in Boston, said there won’t be any studies on humans for a couple more years, and those studies will take many years to determine potential efficacy, but this at least sounds hopeful.

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,” Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University, said.

Taking an approach towards growth and creation for antibiotics is a novel way to deal with the current situation – instead of focusing on the inevitable doom of resistance that so many have been afraid of.

Disclaimer: This doesn’t mean you should let your little ones go to town feasting on your yard. Even though they probably still will.

[Photo from Flickr user hamtaro1224]

 

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