One major problem in the pharmaceutical industry is that no matter how effective drugs can be, the viruses and bacteria they¡¯re meant to treat evolve over time develop resistances to their destroyers. Now, researchers have managed to tweak an old antibiotic to make it 25,000 times more potent than ever before.
Vancomycin has been a powerful antibiotic for ?a while, often used as a last resort to tackle drug-resistant infections. Earlier this week, medical researchers managed to make three chemical modifications to the solution, offering it two new ways to eliminate pathogens in the human body. The knockout punch it delivers is so effective, the tests implied, that the germs under fire have no chance to develop a drug resistance.
The authors of the study at the Scripps research Institute in California believe this sort of medical nuke is the exact solution we need in the war on drug-resistant infections. ¡°As an alternative to championing the restricted use of antibiotics or conceding that bacteria will always outsmart us, can durable antibiotics be developed that are capable of continued or even more widespread use?¡± the study says. The researchers believe we can fully overcome the evolution in bacterial resistance with more drugs of this kind.
To redesign Vancomycin, the team, led by chemical biologist Dale Boger, drew from years of work and study on the drug. It¡¯s capable of killing bacteria with one of the two main types of cell wall structures they present with, such as Staph aureus. These bacteria have protective walls that surround their cells, offering them some breathing room to evolve beyond the effects of regular antibiotics.
Regular antibiotics usually target important enzymes in a cell, which the protective wall can help against. Vancomycin instead latches onto D-Alanine-D-Alanine amino acids that form sections of the bacteria¡¯s cell wall, destabilising it and making it crumble, which eventually leads to cell death.?
REUTERS
Over the decades of its use, bacteria have slowly developed a resistance that involves them switching wall-building materials to D-Alanine-D-Lactate in the later stages of drug treatment, which makes Vancomycin a thousand times less effective. What the researchers have now managed to do is tweak the drug¡¯s structure so it can clamp onto both types of amino acids, negating more than a decade of the bacteria¡¯s resistance to it in one fell swoop.
In addition, the team also modified two other areas of Vancomycin¡¯s structure. They added a compound over the molecule, called CBP, which targets an enzyme used by bacteria to build their cell walls. Next, they added ammonium salt, which is capable of punching a hole in the soft cell membrane underneath the rigid protective wall.
Any of these methods could tackle bacteria by itself, but adding all three together makes for the Mike Tyson of antibiotics. The researchers have yet to carry out animal testing, only after which they¡¯ll be able to move onto human trials, pending a successful result. If all of that works out, we could see a powerful drug of this kind in the market within the next five years.