This story was first published in digitalhealth.net
Ultra-tough antibiotic created in US
Scientists in the US have re-engineered a vital antibiotic in a bid to wipe out one of the world's most threatening superbugs.
Published in the PNAS journal, it is reported that a new version of vancomycin, which fights bacteria in three different ways, has been designed to be ultra-tough, making it much less likely that the bugs can dodge the attack.
The Scripps Research Institute team hope the drug, which is yet to be tested in animals and people, will be ready for use within five years if it passes more tests.
The team aimed to find out if they could revamp vancomycin to restore its killing ability, especially in hard-to-treat infections such as vancomycin-resistant enterococci or VRE. They made strategic modifications to the molecular structure of the old drug to help it better destroy cell walls.
Dr Dale Boger, lead researcher, said: "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."
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