NEW MEDICAL AMMO SWATS SUPERBUGS!
TWO revolutionary new antibiotics are being hailed as miracle meds that can kill drug-resistant superbugs and save millions of lives by fighting staph infection and pneumonia! Developed by a team at Harvard, the synthetic compound cresomycin zaps the killer bacteria Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which can cause pneumonia. Although cresomycin hasn’t yet undergone human trials, “our results show significantly improved inhibitory activity against a long list of pathogenic bacterial strains that kill more than a million people every year,” says Harvard professor Andrew Myers. Most existing antibiotics work by disrupting the function of a cell’s ribosomes, which are the biomolecular machines responsible for making proteins. But some bacteria have evolved mechanisms that prevent older antibiotics from working. Cresomycin, however, is better able to bind to the ribosomes, killing the bacteria.
More than 2.8 million antimicrobial-resistant infections occur in the U.S. each year, killing 35,000 patients, according to the CDC. “Antibiotics form the foundation on which modern medicine is built,” says Harvard researcher Kelvin Wu. “Without antibiotics, many cutting-edge medical procedures like surgeries, cancer treatments and organ transplants cannot be done.”
Cresomycin is fully synthetic, which allows for more rapid production and testing, accelerating the drug discovery process, say researchers. Studies to show safety and efficacy in humans are the next step.
Meanwhile, scientists at Swiss drugmaker Roche have developed another antibiotic, Zosurabalpin, which targets the superbug CRAB, Carbapenemresistant Acinetobacter baumannii. It disrupts CRAB’s ability to stop antibiotics from penetrating cell layers. The World Health Organization has classified CRAB as a “priority 1 critical” pathogen. There are about 8,500 CRAB infections and 700 deaths in the U.S. every year, which are primarily associated with hospital-acquired infections. No new drug that targets CRAB has been launched in 50 years.
It reduced the levels of bacteria in mice with CRAB-induced pneumonia and prevented deaths from CRAB-related sepsis. Human trials are underway.