The War Against Antibiotic Resistance

           One major advance in modern medicine was the discovery of antibiotics. Penicillin, which was first identified by Sir Alexander Fleming in 1928, was one of the first to be mass-produced for the treatment of bacterial infections. This discovery revolutionized the medical landscape by introducing naturally-synthesized remedies for human illness. Since then, many more antimicrobial agents have been identified and mass-produced for a variety of bacterial infections. However, an emerging issue is antibiotic resistance, which is inevitable due to the rapid evolution of bacterial populations. Another challenge lies in the production of new antimicrobials, since compounds that may have antibacterial properties often face difficulty in penetrating bacterial cell walls.

            A new study published in Nature by Ling and colleagues  may alleviate these challenges for future antimicrobial discovery. They realized that many bacterial species found in nature have not been utilized for antimicrobial production and theorized that these populations can serve as a source for new antibiotics. Thus, they developed a special chip, called an iChip, to grow bacteria from soil samples. Extracts from bacterial colonies were then applied to cultures of Staphylococcus aureus, and those that inhibited S. aureus were classified as antimicrobial candidates. During this screening process, a compound produced by the bacterium Eleftheria terrae was found to have strong antimicrobial activity. This new compound was named teixobactin, and what made it unique was its ability to remain effective against drug-resistant bacterial strains. Ling and colleagues were curious about the efficacy of teixobactin, so they applied teixobactin to S. aureus strains at initial and late stages of growth. Teixobactin was found to kill S. aureus more efficiently than antibiotics currently used for treatment of S. aureus infections, and interestingly, the authors were unable to generate teixobactin-resistant colonies. This finding suggested that teixobactin can potentially be a strong antibacterial compound since bacteria could not develop resistance. Later studies showed that teixobactin prevented the formation of the bacterial cell wall and served as a potent therapeutic in three mouse models of methicillin-resistant S. aureus, or MRSA. Ling et al. concluded their report by highlighting the novelty of their antimicrobial discovery method and setting the precedent for the development of more highly potent antibacterial compounds in the future.

              The growing problem of antibiotic resistance is in need of a solution, and this new finding will be instrumental in the search for novel antibiotics that will not trigger resistance in bacterial populations. This work shed light on the fact that many bacterial species in nature have never been grown in labs. In their natural environment, bacteria must adapt to different conditions and must secrete antibacterial substances to compete with other species and thrive. Therefore, a wide range of antimicrobial compounds must exist that can be utilized to combat bacterial infections, and it is the goal of biologists to identify as many of these substances as possible by creating new methods of cultivating novel bacterial species. I am confident that future endeavors will yield devices besides the iChip that can support the growth of bacteria that have not yet been studied, and we will continue to move one step ahead of pathogenic bacteria.

Antimicrobials are becoming more scarce, but a study by Ling and colleagues suggests that future discoveries of novel antimicrobials may be more common.

Courtesy: http://www.secretnews-compact.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13955:heres-the-answer-for-drug-resistant-bacteria&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=50