NEWLY DISCOVERED ANTIBIOTIC KILLS PATHOGENS WITHOUT RESISTANCE

For years, pathogens resis­tance to antibi­otics has put them one step ahead of researchers, which is causing a public health crisis. But in new research, led by the researchers at the present study discloses that  a newly dis­cov­ered antibi­otic has been identified  that elim­i­nates pathogens without encoun­tering any detectable resistance -- a finding that chal­lenges long-​​held sci­en­tific beliefs and holds great promise for treating chronic infec­tions like tuber­cu­losis caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, diseseases caused by Streptococcus sp.

The work is mainly carried out by the North­eastern researchers led by Lewis along with the northeastern biology professor Slava Epstein and in association with NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge and Selcia ltd. UK. They played an important role in   developing a novel method for growing uncul­tured bac­teria led to the dis­covery of the antibi­otic, called teixobactin, and also ana­lyzing and testing the com­pound for resis­tance from pathogens. It is supposed to be the first discovery of an antibi­otic to which resis­tance by muta­tions of pathogens have not been identified.

The research team says teixobactin's dis­covery presents a promising new oppor­tu­nity to treat chronic infec­tions caused by staphy­lo­coccus aureus, that are highly resis­tant to antibi­otics, as well as tuber­cu­losis, which involves a com­bi­na­tion of ther­a­pies with neg­a­tive side effects.

The screening of soil microor­gan­isms has pro­duced most antibi­otics, but only 1% of them will grow in the lab, and this lim­ited resource was over­mined. The reserachers  spent years seeking to address this problem by tap­ping into a new source of antibi­otics beyond those cre­ated by syn­thetic means: uncul­tured bac­teria, which make up 99% of all species in external envi­ron­ments. The scientists have devel­oped a novel method for growing uncul­tured bac­teria in their nat­ural envi­ron­ment. The approach of developing the same  involves the iChip, a minia­ture device Epstein's team cre­ated that can iso­late and help grow single cells in their nat­ural envi­ron­ment and thereby pro­vides researchers with much improved access to uncul­tured bac­teria.

The antibi­otic was dis­cov­ered during a rou­tine screening for antimi­cro­bial mate­rial using the above method. Lewis then tested the com­pound for resis­tance devel­op­ment and did not find mutant       Mycobac­terium tuber­cu­losis resis­tant to teixobactin, which was found to block sev­eral dif­ferent tar­gets in the cell wall syn­thesis pathway.

In 2013, Lewis revealed ground­breaking research in a sep­a­rate paper pub­lished byNature that pre­sented a novel approach to treat and elim­i­nate tuberculosis and other non resistant disease.

---