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Researchers Discover Powerful Antibiotic That Could Combat Superbugs Like MRSA

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Scientists have discovered an antibiotic that is powerful enough to combat some of the most dangerous "superbugs", or serious infections that are typically resistant to standard medications, that are currently plaguing the healthcare industry

Superbugs can't be killed by antibiotics, and are an increasing threat to public health. Each year, superbugs sicken 2 million Americans and kill 23,000. Furthermore, researchers have warned that we could be entering a post-antibiotic era in which patients could die from infections that were at one time treatable and routine surgeries could become dangerous.

The development of new antibiotics has been a challenge. This is partially due to financial reasons. There is a huge cost and financial risk involved because testing finding and testing antibiotics can take up to ten years and more than $1 billion. Scientifically, discovering antibiotics has long been difficult.

Scientists at Northeaster University in Boston have now invented a contraption that allows them to grow germs that could allow them to study about half of soil bacteria, which significantly increases the pool of drug candidates.

Researcher Kim Lewis, coauthor of a study published in Nature, and colleagues used something called the iChip, which sorts individual bacterial cells harvested from soil into tiny chambers. The iChip is then buried in the ground, which is where molecules from the soil then seep into the chamber, which gives the bacteria the type of environment in which it likes to naturally reproduce. Once the bacteria start to grow in the iChip, they appear to have no trouble continuing to reproduce in a lab dish.

This is a huge breakthrough because while dirt is filled with germs, scientists have not been able to grow this bacteria in a lab, which is essential for studying and testing them. In a lab dish, scientists have only been able to coax about 1% of soil bacteria to grow.

The researchers tested 10,000 compounds and discovered 25 new antibiotics. Just one antibioitic, however, stood out, said Lewis. This antibiotic, called teixobactin, killed a superbug known as MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, in mice. It also killed a strain of drug-resistant tuberculosis. Unfortunately, teixobactin was not able to kill one of the worst superbugs of all - Klebsiella pneumoniae - which has evolved to resist all currently known antibiotics.

Teixobactin has only been tested in mice, and human trials are still two years away. Completing the trials will take three years. Most drugs that look to be promising in animals prove not to be successful in human testing. Doctors do not yet know if it will be safe enough for people. In the best case scenario, if teixobactrin is shown to be safe in humans, it will be at least five years before it will be on the market.

Nevertheless, scientists are excited about the possibility of having new antibiotics at their disposal.

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