The bacteria would not resist

MADRID (EFE).— A multinational consortium led by scientists from the University of Uppsala (Sweden) discovered—and successfully tested in mice—a new class of antibiotics with the ability to cure infections caused by multidrug-resistant bacteria.

The new class of antibiotics is described yesterday in an article in the journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” (PNAS).

The research was carried out with the support of the European Enable project, led by Uppsala University and the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, which together with more than fifty European partners from academia and industry combine resources and knowledge to advance the development of antibiotics against multi-resistant batteries.

Antibiotics are the basis of modern medicine and in the last century they have considerably improved people’s lives.

They are depended on to treat or prevent bacterial infections, to reduce the risk of infection in cancer treatments, in invasive surgical interventions, in transplants, and in the care of mothers and premature babies, among many other uses.

However, the global rise in antibiotic resistance increasingly threatens their efficiency. To guarantee access to effective antibiotics in the future, it is urgent to find new compounds.

The consortium developed a new type of antibiotics that target the LpxH protein, which Gram-negative bacteria use to generate the outer membrane that protects them from the environment and some antibiotics such as penicillin.

Not all bacteria produce this layer, but those that do include the organisms that the World Health Organization (WHO) has identified as the most critical for developing new treatments, including Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae, which are resistant to available antibiotics.

The team showed that this new class of antibiotics is highly active against multidrug-resistant bacteria and can treat bloodstream infections in a mouse model, demonstrating its potential.

And since this class of compounds is new and the LpxH protein has not yet been exploited as a target for antibiotics, there is no pre-existing resistance to the compounds, the authors highlight.

The team cautions that although the current results are very promising, “considerable” additional work will be needed before these compounds are ready for clinical trials.