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| Thursday, 18 May 2006 12:01 | | BNN: British Nursing News Online · www.bnn-online.co.uk
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Scientists have discovered a new antibiotic which is effective in fighting drug-resistant hospital superbugs.
Platensimycin is in the early stages of development but could potentially prove invaluable in the fight against bacteria such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Enterococcus, resistant to even the most powerful modern antibiotics such as vancomycin.
Most antibiotics were discovered in the 1940s and 50s and work by disrupting the formation of a bacterium’s walls, proteins or DNA, so that it cannot reproduce and spread.
But DNA mutations can make bacteria immune to the effects of drugs and, as the use of antibiotics has risen in the past few decades, so has the number of pathogenic bacteria that have developed resistance to them.
"It is believed that the widespread drug resistance among bacterial pathogens is due to the limited choice of antibiotics," wrote Eric Brown of McMaster University in Canada in an accompanying article.
The new antibiotic, a molecule produced by Streptomyces platensis, a fungus-like bacterium, works in a different way to previous antibiotics, inhibiting an enzyme called FabF which is used in the formation of fatty acids in bacterial cells.
Dr Brown said platensimycinhad an “extraordinary” way of working, although it is not the first anti-bacterial compound to attack the formation of fatty acids.
An experiment on mice infected with Staphylococcus aureus showed that the new drug cleared the bacteria with no harmful side effects. Despite this, it will be at least ten years before it becomes available in pharmacies.
"The path ahead remains a long one that includes further preclinical study and, if these studies are successful, extensive clinical trials for safety and efficacy in humans," said Dr Brown. "Platensimycin is nevertheless the most potent inhibitor reported so far for FabF."
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