From Science Daily:
'Poisoned arrow' defeats antibiotic-resistant bacteria
A team of Princeton researchers reported today in the journal Cell that they have found a compound, SCH-79797, that can simultaneously puncture bacterial walls and destroy folate within their cells -- while being immune to antibiotic resistance.
Bacterial infections come in two flavors -- Gram-positive and Gram-negative -- named for the scientist who discovered how to distinguish them. The key difference is that Gram-negative bacteria are armored with an outer layer that shrugs off most antibiotics. In fact, no new classes of Gram-negative-killing drugs have come to market in nearly 30 years.
"This is the first antibiotic that can target Gram-positives and Gram-negatives without resistance," said Zemer Gitai, Princeton's Edwin Grant Conklin Professor of Biology and the senior author on the paper. "From a 'Why it's useful' perspective, that's the crux. But what we're most excited about as scientists is something we've discovered about how this antibiotic works -- attacking via two different mechanisms within one molecule -- that we are hoping is generalizable, leading to better antibiotics -- and new types of antibiotics -- in the future."
The greatest weakness of antibiotics is that bacteria evolve quickly to resist them, but the Princeton team found that even with extraordinary effort, they were unable to generate any resistance to this compound. "This is really promising, which is why we call the compound's derivatives 'Irresistin,'" Gitai said.
This is big. Nobel Prize big if it pans out. Holy Grail. Once they figure out the mechanism, they will be able to develop a class of these drugs tailored to specific bugs.
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