Anonymous
By Shelly Leachman, UC Santa Barbara
In a potential game changer for the treatment of superbugs, a new class of antibiotics was developed that cured mice infected with bacteria deemed nearly “untreatable” in humans — and resistance to the drug was virtually undetectable.
Developed by a research team of UC Santa Barbara scientists, the study was published(link is external) in the journal eBioMedicine. The drug works by disrupting many bacterial functions simultaneously — which may explain how it killed every pathogen tested and why low-level of bacterial resistance was observed after prolonged drug exposure.
From left to right: Michael Mahan, Scott Mahan, Douglas Heithoff, Lucien Barnes (courtesy photo)
The project was led by professors Michael Mahan, David Low, Chuck Samuel and their research team, Douglas Heithoff, Scott Mahan, Lucien Barnes and Cyril George. Additional contributors include professors Guillermo Bazan (UC Santa Barbara) and Andrei Osterman (Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute).
The discovery was serendipitous. The U.S. Army had a pressing need to charge cell phones while in the field — essential for soldier survival. Because bacteria are miniature power plants, compounds were designed by Bazan’s group to harness bacterial energy as a “microbial” battery. Later the idea arose to re-purpose these compounds as potential antibiotics.
David Low and Charles Samuel (courtesy photo)
“When asked to determine if the chemical compounds could serve as antibiotics, we thought they would be highly toxic to human cells similar to bleach,” said Mahan, the project lead. “Most were toxic — but one was not — and it could kill every bacterial pathogen we tested.”
What makes the drug unique is the failure of bacteria to become resistant to it. And bacterial resistance is typically a major barrier to antibiotic development since it limits a drug’s (potential value in the marketplace.
“The key finding was that bacterial resistance to the drug was virtually undetectable,” said lead author Heithoff. “Most drugs fail at this stage of development and never get to clinical practice.”
The antibiotic has a unique mechanism of action. Contrary to most drugs (like penicillin) that target a specific germ function, the new drug targets many functions simultaneously.
“The drug appears to affect the bacterial membrane which, in turn, disrupts multiple bacterial functions,” explained Low, the co-project lead. “This may account for the broad-spectrum antibacterial activity and low level of bacterial resistance.”
“This class of antibiotics has potential as a new versatile therapy for antimicrobial resistant pathogens,” Samuel said.
Additional drug safety and efficacy studies will need to be conducted to fully understand the clinical benefits and risks before the drug can be used in clinical practice.
(courtesy image)
The study, “A Broad-spectrum Synthetic Antibiotic That Does Not Evoke Bacterial Resistance,” was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Army Research Office via the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies (ICB) cooperative agreement and contract. The research was funded via a $4 million Congressional addition that Representative Salud Carbajal was able to add to the FY20 Defense Appropriations Bill for the UC Santa Barbara ICB.
“UC Santa Barbara has always been a leader in research, technology and development,” Carbajal remarked. “The finding of this new class of antibiotics reaffirms the talent we have in the Central Coast, and marks a big step forward in our country’s biotechnology and national defense.
“As a Gaucho myself, I’m proud to have helped secure the additional funding that has supported the researchers and scientists on our campus and enabled them to continue making incredible discoveries like this one, and I will continue advocating for more resources to enhance our educational partnership programs.”
Hmm. I’m skeptical. Anyone else? For one thing, the ‘power point’ type slide there at the end looks like it’s written for some undergrads or maybe even as a high school science project.
Please, then, refuse to accept it if you need treatment for MRSA in the future.
If they had made the slide more technical, you’d be complaining you couldn’t figure it out, no doubt.
That slide was probably prepared for distribution to general, non-scientific media outlets, like Edhat. Just because you don’t see the highly technical info here doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
The research was reported in a respected peer-reviewed scientific journal, which few laymen could comprehend. Here is a small exerpt from the published article explaining the basic mechanism of action:
COE intercalation into phospholipid bilayers is driven by the hydrophobic centre and the terminal ionic functionalities, consisting of the conjugated aromatic core and hydrocarbon pendants. These pendant moieties resemble the fatty acid centre of the bilayer, while the cationic end groups and terminal acyl chains interact via coulombic and hydrophobic interactions with the membrane surface functionalities.
And that’s why they posted the “high school” level version of the study.
So in some ways it is a quat.
LOL!!!!!!
Maybe you should use Google and “do your research” so you can come back and report on exactly what Democratic conspiracy this carries out.
That’s funny. That slide is high school level, dude.
They wanted you to be able to interpret it.
Probably after seeing how many commenters couldn’t figure out how to thread replies.
So clever!
Hope so!
What a wonderful and very important discovery that will no doubt save innumerable lives and prevent untold suffering. So interesting that they found it by accident as well. The timing couldn’t be better, what with all the virulent, highly resistant bacteria that exist in the world today. Way to go UCSB scientists!!!
Achooo, you’re probably right. They threw out a dumb-downed version of their work.
Still can’t figure out the threading, eh?
““When asked to determine if the chemical compounds could serve as antibiotics, we thought they would be highly toxic to human cells similar to bleach,” said Mahan, the project lead. “Most were toxic — but one was not — and it could kill every bacterial pathogen we tested.”” The last time I heard someone talk about doing something like this they were branded a quack and idiot. I guess it really was how science works: ask a question, form a hypothesis, make a prediction based on the hypothesis, test the prediction – repeat. I feel like we’ve forgotten that the past few years. Now it’s form a narrative and villify/censor/exclude anyone who doesn’t agree with it. That’s the difference between “science” and “The Science™ ”
“science” becomes more robust when questioned and scrutinized “The Science™ ” does not. If you’re not allowed to question it, it isn’t science. Imagine if someone told these UC scientists “nah, it would be highly toxic to human cells similar to bleach”, and so they didn’t even try.
Bro, you know you’re talking to yourself, right? LOL/
If you’re buying this is a magnificent all-around cure all for drug-resistant bacteria, as the article implies…I’ve got a bridge to sell you…
LOL, damn, dude, maybe let them test it before you dismiss it.
For someone who sometimes claims to be a physician, he seems to lack a lot of basic knowledge about medicine.
This seems to be a BFD. The life-saving potential is immeasureable.
Congratulations to all involved!
This is what I worry about: “Additional drug safety and efficacy studies will need to be conducted to fully understand the clinical benefits and risks before the drug can be used in clinical practice.”
Don’t worry PSCHLAGE, they’ll create an emergency so they can skip that step and get the product right to market.
PSCHLAGE
Why would you worry about testing a medical product or procedure to be sure it is safe?
Wouldn’t you be worried if there were NO testing?
And here he goes again, folks! Bringing up politics in a non-political thread. You just can’t help yourself, can you?
VOR is the real time embodiment of the way that so many Americans have become paranoid because they subconsciously perceive themselves as being “victims”.
They don’t truly know why they feel this way, but they do and it manifests as this generalized paranoia and fear projected on to every facet of the world around them but often focusing on a terror of the unknown. Their previous assumptions about their place in the world has been challenged by the prospect that other people who have historically been treated as “less than” are now looking for a place at the table. POC, people with different sexualities or gender identities, people from other cultures, all of them out there, wanting what these now precariously positioned Americans believe is their birth right.
It’s sad that so many people live in fear, which leads to anxiety, and anger. Unfortunately, it also often leads to violence, thus so many of MTG’s ilk crying out for civil war, organizing terror cells (sorry, patriotic militias), stockpiling weapons, etc..
It doesn’t go terribly well.
If we let politicians break the law in an emergency, politicians will create an emergency so they can break the law.
Alex: you just described yours, and many others here, reaction/response to covid. Fear and paranoia lead to anxiety and anger. When called anyone who brought up the idea that covid came from a lab as a “conspiracy theorists”, you were the one lashing out. When you anyone questioned if the vaccine stopped transmission, you were the one lashing out. Those hesitant about the vax never wished harm on those who took it willingly, conversely you and others that took that vax wanted those hesitant to receive it to be shunned from society, refused medical care and die. You sir, are the one lashing out with anger but I’m not sure what you’re afraid of, the truth? Admitting to yourself you were wrong? Or worse, that someone you apparatenly despise was right?
The idea that ‘scientific’ investigations started with a search for battery power and ended up with a medical therapeutic is hard to balance. The military has huge bucks to research their needs and the public gets the accidental spin offs it seems. Imagine if the money had been offered first to medical research and care. But however it came to be, let’s hope it is a effective as this blurb promises.
Some claims of contribution to this effort in the article are exaggerated at best. However, the tech itself has promise to fight some of the worst bacterial infections. For those that question the motives of this research, I can assure you that the team commercializing this tech is focused on saving lives and improving patient outcomes. Anyone interested in learning the complete story about this tech, which is actually 5 years old at this point, could contact UCSB’s Technology and Industry Alliance.
Encouraging others to post comments that have already been deleted for violating the site’s guidelines, should be grounds for ejection from the site. Just my opinion.
“If the best you could come up with was a bunch of unrelated mask disputes, and a single restaurant that didn’t want to serve people who were vaccinated (ooohhh so hateful) then I think we’re done here. case closed.” – Actually, you’re right. I proved you wrong. You said it “NEVER” happened, I proved it did. Case closed indeed.
I wish Edhat had the ‘mute’ feature of Nextdoor. I could mute VOR so I don’t have to wade through his never-ending/broken record of the same gripes and ‘reasoning’ (pun intended) on each dang topic.
Muting people’s opinions with whom you personally don’t agree is a terrible idea any way you look at it.
BASIC – when those opinions are blatant lies and off topic, then I think readers should be able to ignore them. If they’re on topic, same thing. Are you seriously saying people should be unable to ignore reading comments? Muting isn’t the same as deleting. I’d hate to live where I’m FORCED to read off topic rants….. lol and here I am!