Answer found for drug resistance

Scientists working in the field of medicine are exulting and they have every reason to. After three long decades, they have managed to isolate a new antibiotic, Teixobactin, that is not prone to bacterial resistance. This has far-reaching implications as it addresses a major worry – that of resistance to the current crop of antibiotics used in treating bacterial infections.

The issue is so serious that some scientists say it is as worrisome as terrorism. In fact, they feared that in the next couple of decades, patients would start dying after routine surgery if they acquired an infection in hospital due to drug resistant bacteria.

Just when it looked like scientists had reached a dead-end and apocalypse was near, a team at the Antimicrobial Discovery Center in Boston’s Northeastern University in the United States has succeeded in culturing a bacteria that normally cannot be developed under laboratory conditions. The success which was documented in the journal Nature has created waves among those working in the field.

Led by Distinguished Professor Kim Lewis, the Boston group worked with researchers at the University of Bonn in Germany and a US Massachusetts-based company NovoBiotic to come up with the new antibiotic which kills microbes by preventing them from constructing cell walls.

In other words, the microbes get killed and not be able to develop resistance. The ingenuity shown by the scientists is awe-inspiring. For, only a tiny percentage of bacteria can be tapped in laboratory conditions. The rest exist in soil and dirt but cannot survive in labs. The scientists developed a device called the iChip, inserted it in the soil and succeeded in extracting a substantial portion of the antibiotic from the microbes which then was tested in laboratory conditions. This was found to be effective against disease-causing pathogens.

The discovery is expected to open the door to a new generation of antibiotics that will nullify bacterial resistance to drugs. The antibiotic needs to go through a range of tests including clinical trials and is expected to be ready for use in the next four years. When tested on mice, Teixobactin was extremely effective against Tuberculosis-causing bacteria which is great news for developing countries like India.

Many other serious bacterial infections that affect the lungs, blood, urinary tract, heart and abdomen have been treated effectively by Teixobactin. It has paved the way for developing an alternative method to tap new antibiotics rather than try the increasingly hopeless method of making existing antibiotics more efficient and neutralise infection before the bacteria can develop resistance. In short, Teixobactin is nothing short of a veritable revolution in the field of medicine.