Now, antibiotics to combat drug-resistant ’superbugs’

WASHINGTON - Scientists have developed next-generation of antibiotics, which may fight be able to fight ’superbugs’ that are resistant to normal antibiotics.

Micha Fridman of Tel Aviv University said that the key to developing this drug is the bacteria itself.

“We took the mechanism of bacterial resistance and used this mechanism itself to generate antibiotics. It’s thanks to these bacteria that we can develop a better medication,” explained Fridman.

The research has been conducted in collaboration with Sylvie Garneau-Tsodikova from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

According to Fridman, certain bacterial strains include enzymes, which help the bacteria to inactivate antibiotics.

When the enzymes meet with these antibiotics, they chemically alter the drug, making the antibiotic ineffective and unable to recognize its target.

Turning this powerful mechanism against the bacteria itself, the team isolated the antibiotic-inactivating enzymes from the bacteria, and then integrated them into the drugs.

With this alteration, the modified antibiotics proved to be effective against typically resistant bacterial strains.

Once the researchers identified how the bacteria incapacitated the antibiotics, they were able to create a drug that could block bacterial resistance while maintaining the integrity of the antibiotic.

These new antibiotics will be a vast improvement on today’s drugs, said Fridman.

When fully developed, they could be used to treat infections that are now considered difficult if not impossible to treat with current antibiotics.

The findings were published in the journal ChemBioChem. (ANI)