The development of new antibiotic therapies has slowed. A small illness once becomes fatal and is at risk of reappearing again and again as we are rapidly running out of effective antibiotics.
The researchers of the new study have created a unique antibiotic candidate against this problem. The scientists started with an existing antibiotic that works well against gram-positive bacteria. They modified the structure to make it more effective against gram-negative bacteria.
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Fabimycin, the study candidate, was effective against 54 different bacterial strains, including E. coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Acinetobacter baumannii, on more than 200 clinically isolated drug-resistant bacterial colonies. In rat studies, it has been shown that Fabimycin can treat drug-resistant pneumonia or urinary tract infections while reducing bacterial levels to lower levels than before infection.
In addition, Fabimycin is relatively selective in the bacteria it attacks, leaving some harmless bacteria unharmed. It’s an improvement over many of the antibiotics in use today, which indiscriminately kill many helpful microorganisms and lead to many negative side effects.
Further research could lead to the eventual addition of Fabimycin or equivalent compounds to our arsenal against superbugs, especially hard-to-treat diseases.
The study was published on Science Center ACS magazine.
Source: Medindia
