Antibiotic resistance: the search continues

A new way to treat antibiotic resistance has been proposed by Canadian scientists

Marina Astvatsaturyan, Echo of Moscow

Biologists from the Albrechtsen Research Center at St. Boniface Hospital Albrechtsen Research Center and the University of Manitoba have created a drug that is able to defeat two of the 10 "priority pathogens" – bacteria, which, according to the recently released WHO list, by virtue of their antibiotic resistance pose the greatest threat to the world health care that requires prompt action.

The drug, which so far is called PEG-2S, has received temporary patent protection, and its creation is described in the Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology (Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology: Dibrov et al., Development of a novel rationally designed antibiotic to inhibit a nontraditional bacterial target). Without affecting healthy cells, it prevents the growth of pathogenic bacteria, the energy for which is supplied by a specific chain of redox reactions observed in many bacteria. This is a sodium pump (NQR) that provides respiration of a bacterial cell. As the Canadian authors have shown, the drug PEG-2S suppresses the work of the sodium pump, and as a result, the growth of bacteria Chlamydia trachomatis.

The effect of the drug is narrowly directed, it is not toxic to healthy cells of the body and normal intestinal microflora and affects only those bacterial cells whose vital activity is associated with the respiratory sodium pump. The list of bacteria with such a pump is constantly growing with the advent of new information about genomes. Currently, more than 20 different pathogenic bacteria with the NQR pump are known, and a drug that can bypass multiple antibiotic resistance by suppressing an important mechanism for bacteria can make a breakthrough in the creation of antimicrobial drugs. 

The number of targets for the action of antibiotics is limited, new antibacterial drugs have not been discovered since 1987, and only two antibiotics have received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) since 2009.

"New drugs are not released to the market because they are all aimed at the mechanisms by which bacteria develop resistance. But we have not only found a new and effective target, we have modeled a compound that hits it without affecting normal cells ," quotes one of the authors, Grant Pierce (St. Boniface Hospital, University of Manitoba), EurekAlert! "The results of our collaboration are incredibly inspiring," adds the lead author of the publication Pavel Dibrov from the University of Manitoba. According to him, PEG-2S variants are currently being created, and there is hope that it will be possible to create antimicrobial agents based on this compound, specific for each pathogenic bacterium with a sodium pump NQR.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  19.05.2017