Newly discovered antibiotic kills
pathogens without resistance
The discovery of this
novel compound challenges long-held scientific beliefs and holds great promise
for treating an array of menacing infections, says Northeastern University Distinguished
Professor Kim Lewis. Photo by Brooks Canaday/Northeastern University.
For years, pathogens’ resistance to antibiotics has put them
one step ahead of researchers, which is causing a public health crisis,
according to University Distinguished Professor Kim Lewis. But in new research, Lewis and his colleagues
present a newly discovered antibiotic 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 and those caused
by MRSA.
The research, which is making headlines around the world and
receiving applause from the science community, was published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Northeastern
researchers’ pioneering work to develop a novel method for growing uncultured
bacteria led to the discovery of the antibiotic, called teixobactin, and
Lewis’ lab played a key role in analyzing and testing the compound for resistance
from pathogens. Lewis, who is the paper’s lead author, said this marks the
first discovery of an antibiotic to which resistance by mutations of
pathogens have not been identified.
Lewis and Northeastern
biology professor Slava Epstein co-authored the paper with colleagues from the
University of Bonn in Germany, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, and Selcia Limited in the United Kingdom.
The research team says teixobactin’s discovery presents a
promising new opportunity to treat chronic infections caused by staphylococcus
aureus, or MRSA, 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 percent of them
will grow in the lab, and this limited resource was overmined in the 1960s,
Lewis explained. He and Epstein 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 percent of all species in
external environments.
They developed a novel method for growing uncultured
bacteria in their natural environment, which led to the founding of NovoBiotic.
Their approach 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.
NovoBiotic has since assembled about 50,000 strains of uncultured bacteria
and discovered 25 new antibiotics, of which teixobactin is the latest and
most interesting, Lewis said.
The antibiotic was discovered during a routine screening for
antimicrobial material using this method. Lewis then tested the compound
for resistance development and did not find mutant MRSA or Mycobacterium
tuberculosis resistant to teixobactin, which was found to block several different
targets in the cell wall synthesis pathway.
“Our impression is that nature produced a compound that
evolved to be free of resistance,” Lewis said. “This challenges the dogma
that we’ve operated under that bacteria will always develop resistance.
Well, maybe not in this case.”
Gerard Wright, a professor in the Department of Biochemistry
and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster University and who was not involved in
this research, examined the team’s work in a separate article for Nature published
in concert with the new research paper. In his article, Wright noted that
while it remains to be seen whether other mechanisms for resistance against
teixobactin exist in the environment, the team’s work could lead to identifying
“other ‘resistance-light’ antibiotics.”
“(The researchers’) work offers hope that innovation and creativity
can combine to solve the antibiotics crisis,” Wright wrote.
Going forward, the
research team hopes to develop teixobactin into a drug.
In 2013, Lewis revealed groundbreaking research in a separate paper published
by Nature that presented a novel approach to treat and eliminate MRSA—the
so-called “superbug” that
infects 1 million Americans annually. Lewis and his team discovered a way
to destroy the dormant persister cells, which are key to the success of
chronic infections caused by MRSA.
Lewis said this latest
research lays new ground to advance his innovative work on treating MRSA and
other chronic infections.
by Greg
St. Martin
This entry was posted
in Society & Culture.
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