Antibodies will help antibiotics

Newspaper "Search" No. 46-2015

Antibody-oriented antibiotics can overcome a drug-resistant bacterial infection. This approach has been successfully tested in mice. With details – Nature News (‘Stealth bomb’ antibiotic vanquishes drug-resistant bacteria – VM).

A group of researchers from the California biotech company Genentech borrowed the concept of cancer treatment, according to which an antibody (a protein designed to attach to certain cells) binds to an anti-cancer drug. Such an antibody-drug conjugate underlies, for example, the drug Kadsil, which attaches to breast cancer cells before they launch their destructive mechanism. 

Genentech immunologist Sanjeev Mariathasan and a group of colleagues adapted this strategy by binding antibodies against the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus with a derivative of the antibiotic rifampicin, which is used to treat tuberculosis, and tested it in mouse cells. 

Scientists infected mice with methicillin-resistant staphylococcus, then began treating rodents with an experimental conjugate, and used the antibiotic vancomycin, which is often used against drug-resistant bacteria, as a control. The experimental drug turned out to be almost a thousand times more effective against methicillin-resistant staphylococcus compared to vancomycin, as the researchers reported in an article published in the journal Nature (Lehar et al., Novel antibody–antibiotic conjugate eliminates intracellular S. aureus – VM). According to Mariathasan, such treatment can be compared to the action of an invisible bomber, stealth. First, the antibiotic component attaches to the bacteria floating freely in the intercellular space, and then the bacterium penetrates into the cell, carrying with it the treatment against itself. As soon as it is in the cell, certain enzymes destroy the connection between the antibody and the antibiotic, activating the latter exactly where it is needed to eliminate the infection.

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16.11.2015