Over 300 Different Types Of Drug-Resistant Bacteria Are Defeated By Recently Discovered Molecule

Update: 2022-08-17 11:30 IST

Gram negative colonies on an agar plate. (Rodolfo Parulan Jr./Moment/Getty Images)

Scientists and health organisations are working to find solutions to the serious issue of antibiotic resistance. The development of a novel chemical that can successfully manage bacteria that have developed antibiotic resistance may result in assistance soon. The drug is known as 'fabimycin,' and in the future it might be used to treat some of the most difficult illnesses that people can contract.

The new prospective medication specifically targets gram-negative bacteria, a class of virulent pathogens that frequently cause infections of the bloodstream, lungs, and urinary tract. Due to a shielding outer membrane that helps protect the wall from harmful compounds like antibiotics, they are resilient. More than one-third of patients with blood infections caused by gram-negative bacteria in one study at an English hospital died within a year, highlighting the difficulties in controlling these hardy organisms.
Numerous biological targets that can be activated to kill gram-negative bacteria have been discovered as a result of genomic studies and trials using permeability-deficient strains. However, many candidate medicines are unable to reach these targets due to the infections' strong outer membrane and promiscuous efflux pumps.

In order to collect where it can cause the greatest damage, fabimycin avoids the pumps that remove foreign matter by passing through the outer cell layer. Another problem with present treatments is that they eliminate too many beneficial bacteria, but the substance likewise avoids doing so. Starting with an antibiotic that was known to be successful against gram-positive bacteria, the scientists made a number of structural modifications to the molecule to enable it to overcome the formidable defences of gram-negative germs.

More than 300 different kinds of drug-resistant bacteria were affected by fabimycin in tests. Furthermore, it was demonstrated in mouse models to lower dangerous bacteria levels in animals with pneumonia or urinary tract infections to pre-infection levels. The biosynthesis of fabimycin is a promising breakthrough because discovering antibiotics that just possibly work on gram-negative bacteria isn't something that happens every day.

In terms of its chemical makeup or how it functions within the body, gram-negative bacteria are something that we are learning more and more about as time goes on. Finding out how to halt the harm it causes will be much easier with the help of all that information. The signs are encouraging, but there is still a lot of work to be done before fabimycin can be included in a medication that is really used. As scientists prepare it for use in human tests, it will undoubtedly be worth keeping an eye on.

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