back to article Hey, bacteria: Resistance is FUTILE – boffins grow new super-antibiotic

A new type of antibiotic developed from soil culture could solve one of the most pressing medical problems of the modern age: antibiotic resistance. A paper in the journal Nature details how the new antibiotic, dubbed teixobactin, proved completely effective at healing mice infected with the most common drug-resistant forms of …

  1. jphn37

    Past, learn from, uh...duh...huh?

    Just an idea. Maybe we'll want to ban the use of these antibiotics in animal feed???

    1. Mark 85

      Re: Past, learn from, uh...duh...huh?

      And NOT give them to anyone who wants them because they have a cold or the flu. Those uses did a lot of damage in creating drug resistance before feed lots starting feeding them to every cow regardless if it was sick or not.

      I guess it's tough to regulate "common sense" when someone is sitting in the doctor's office with a bad cold and demanding to be given something for it... usually by the name of the drug.

      1. MacroRodent

        Re: Past, learn from, uh...duh...huh?

        I guess it's tough to regulate "common sense" when someone is sitting in the doctor's office with a bad cold and demanding to be given something for it... usually by the name of the drug.

        This is not a case of lack of common sense, but a failure of education! While not everybody can be expected to be an expert in microbiology, teaching the difference between bacteria and viruses, and why antibiotics don't work on the latter should be taught in elementary school. (A couple of picture book pages with cute cartoon bacteria should do it...). It is vital to get this knowledge to the public.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Past, learn from, uh...duh...huh?

        @Mark 85

        "And NOT give them to anyone who wants them because they have a cold or the flu. Those uses did a lot of damage in creating drug resistance"

        That isn't actually the biggest problem, or even one that accounts for majority of the current resistance. Two things that cause much more resistance building among dangerous strains of bacteria are:

        1) Under-taking and under-prescription of antibiotics. In other words, people not finishing their course of antibiotics when they are prescribed them, and doctors, under newly unfounded doctrines of "must minimize all use of antibiotics at all costs" trying to prescribe a one week course for things that should really require a 2-3 week course to kill the bug off properly, just because the patient feels a lot better after a week. The patient then often relapses a month later, requiring an even longer treatment.

        2) Highly questionable research practices in microbiology labs, especially at universities. You get lab assistants hired for a pittance, and then expected to carry out wholly unreasonable amounts of work. They end up flushing the samples they are done with down the drain instead of incinerating them, often containing bacteria bred with multiple antibiotic resistances for research purposes. And consider that bacteria can exchange DNA by simply touching each other. The professors in charge of the work of course know what is going on but have perfect deniability and don't care as long as the funding gravy keep pouring for their research and the research is cost effective. When something is brought to the attention that results in an investigation, the cheap foreign lab assistant on a work visa is the fall guy, and the next one continues doing things the same way because there is no other way to get things done at the rate required by their superiors. Yes, it's an outrage, but it's a pretty intractable problem.

        1. phil dude
          Boffin

          Re: Past, learn from, uh...duh...huh?

          You are A/C why?

          a) In my university AND lab everything is treated with bleach (NaOCL), triclosan and/or EtOH before flushing.

          b) Strains are not "bred" for antibiotic resistance, the genes are introduced via a plasmid. Bacteria that do evolve resistance, are the first for the chopping block, as they are not much good for selection screens (unless you are studying antibiotics , of course).

          You'll get no argument regarding 1). But 2) is possibly true of some labs(!), but it is not one I would want to work in.

          Hence, probably not the problem, but 1) is front and centre....

          P.

          1. Tom 7

            Re: Past, learn from, uh...duh...huh?

            One possible solution to the iCold victims asking for pills is to ban the product in pill format - make it only available in an injectable slow release capsule that would prevent them not taking the full dose.

            You'd need to allergy test them first by which time the cold would be gone and so would they!

          2. DocJames
            Facepalm

            Re: Past, learn from, uh...duh...huh?

            You'll get no argument regarding 1)

            I will argue regarding 1).

            Bacteria evolve according to environmental pressures. The evolution of antibiotic resistance can therefore be increased by increasing the total amount of antibiotics in the environment. Longer courses are going to drive more resistance, not less.

            Clinically we are discussing how to arrange that patients a) have long enough courses of treatment to prevent relapse (it does occur, but not nearly as often as you seem to think) whilst b) stop antibiotics ASAP. In general this means more explanation to patients and expecting them to take responsibility for their health. This is not always achievable.

            (Point 2 is clearly nonsense, as outlined by various posters)

        2. Voland's right hand Silver badge

          Re: Past, learn from, uh...duh...huh?

          Quote: Highly questionable research practices in microbiology labs,

          1. Trans-species plasmid transmission is extremely rare (and difficult).

          2. The most common bacteria used in a lab are Gramm negative B. Subtilis and E. Coli, not any of the really nasty antibiotic resistant species from the Staph and Strep family which are Gramm positive

          3. Going back to 1. If you manage to show an antibiotic resistance plasmid transmission from G- to G+ species in the wild you can probably ask for a Nobel straight away.

          4. I used to play with both bacteria, yeast and cell cultures for a living (and as a part of a degree) for years. Even in the "Darkest, Deapest Eastern Europe" (the place where "lab assistants" for UK and USA professors tend to orginate ya know) waste goes into the bleach bucket _AFTER_ it has been through the _HEATER_. The latter is because we (as I used to be one before going to IT), the "cheap" lab assistants are f*** lazy and hate to scrape agar from petris. It is much easier to melt it out so it was a standard practice to use a "dirty" sterilizer for the purposes of melting out all the crap into a tray to go into the bleach bucket. With all due respect if _THAT_ was the origin for antibiotic resistant species we would have all been dead by now. Surive steam at 160C, then bleach? Yeah... B***cks...

          As far as 2-3 weeks course (in your point 1), you are talking syphils, other treponemas, asperghillosis, yeast infections, lime disease or other "specials". You are definitely not talking staph, strep and various bacterial "colds". These are either dead within 72 h (we treat them for 72 more just to be sure) or resistant so 3 weeks are as useless as 1. In fact, these (3 week or repetitive prescriptions instead of changes) are to be blamed for at least some cases.

          1. Roland6 Silver badge

            Re: Past, learn from, uh...duh...huh?

            >"As far as 2-3 weeks course (in your point 1)"

            You are also talking about relatively common conditions involving Helicobacter Pylori bacteria; which require a cocktail of antibiotics over this sort of time frame to both treat the infection and to prevent re-infection whilst stomach/intestinal ulcers heal.

      3. Fungus Bob

        Re: Past, learn from, uh...duh...huh?

        "before feed lots starting feeding them to every cow regardless if it was sick or not."

        Don't know about Europe, but in the Land O' The Free (and priced too high, at that) the cows raised in feedlots *are* all sick. They are feed so much corn that it actually ruins their health (diarrhea, liver disease, ulcers and a weak immune system).

    2. MacroRodent

      Re: Past, learn from, uh...duh...huh?

      Just an idea. Maybe we'll want to ban the use of these antibiotics in animal feed???

      Agreed! The practice should be made illegal world-wide. Protecting millions of human lives is far more important than making some cows grow a bit faster.

  2. Charles 9

    I wish to elaborate some of the details overlooked in the writeup:

    THE GOOD:

    The antibiotic works in a novel way by bonding not to proteins but to lipids: namely, two lipids vital to building bacterial cell walls. This is the mechanism that makes it so resistance-resistant, as cell walls are much more complex things. Trying to evolve around it is much more likely to result in side effects resulting in evolutionary dead ends. So a bacterium that tries to work around it is pretty likely to die in the attempt. Furthermore, this represents a potential new branch of antibiotic research, meaning this may well be only the beginning. It is also a vindication of the technique used to culture the substance: one that requires the specific envorinmental conditions present in soil as opposed to a culture.

    THE BAD:

    This only works on Gram-positive bacteria. The outer membrane that makes Gram-negative bacteria not accept the violet Gram stain also allows it to repel teixobactin. While staph is Gram-positive, E.coli and salmonella are Gram-negative.

    THE UGLY:

    While this new novel substance seems safe to mammallian cells, human tests are still some time off. Furthermore, there is still no guarantee some mutation down the road can't beat the odds and produce a teixobactin-immune cell wall that is still viable. There is also the question of whether or not this can be defended by other bacterial defenses such as biofilms (which have become notable as being able to survive exposure to concentrated bleach and even gasses).

    1. Chemist

      "While this new novel substance seems safe to mammallian cells, human tests are still some time off. "

      I wish them all well and there seems to be a lot of scope in this new area BUT most candidate drugs fail in this part of the of development phases so it's not a given yet esp. if the class turns out to have any generic toxicity which can't be worked around.

    2. Bilious

      Binding to lipids

      We have some other examples of anti-infectives binding to lipids - think colistin and amphotericin. None of those are highly selective towards the infective agents - they cause considerable injury to the host as well. Other peptide antibiotics exist, but their toxicity is problematic (e.g. bacitracin).

      Searching for new natural anti-infectives has been a good idea for decades - but the greatest success story from the safety and efficacy side are the beta lactam antibiotics. The first representative of the group was penicillin. Numerous related substances have been developed and are extensively used. Resistance is rising because of drug-destroying enzymes produced by the bacteria (betalactamases). It is an arms race - and the complexities are increasing. But there is no reason to give up developing better inhibitors for betalactamases. Teixobactin is unlikely to be a replacement for betalactams such as penicillins, cephalosporins or carbapenems.

  3. JohnnyGStrings

    I would like one of those new Apple iCube devices please

  4. Mike007 Bronze badge

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriophage

    The only reason we're still abusing antibiotics is because they are expensive...

  5. Infernoz Bronze badge
    Facepalm

    Article and possibly the source are partly dubious.

    WTF is this paragraph doing here:

    "What's more, it could remain antibiotic resistant for some time to come – which is particularly useful as bacteria, viruses and other pathogens around the world build up resistance to treatments."

    Antibiotics are to stop bacteria not viruses etc.; the misuse of antibiotics for viral infections like flu and colds is one of the reasons why we have antibiotic resistant bacteria like MRSA!

    Use for other pathogens is only sensible if they have the same vulnerability.

  6. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    Core story.

    Pharma company can actually be arsed to do the work.

    This has been a looooong time coming.

  7. sisk

    And so the arms race with critters of microscopic stature continues. Sounds like we'll have the upper hand for a good long while this time though.

  8. Roland6 Silver badge

    A field in Maine

    "The microbes that create teixobactin, along with another 24 potential new antibiotics, were found in a soil sample taken from a field in Maine."

    Anything special about this field? Suspect not, suspect it shares many parallels with the discovery of Penicillin...

    1. BanjoPaterson

      Re: A field in Maine

      At a guess, I suspect what's "special" about this field is that it's a five minute drive from the labs.

      1. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: A field in Maine

        From another article [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-30657486 ] it would seem the sample came from one of the researcher's own backyard !

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "...could save millions of lives lost to killer microbes"

    Post mortem? Wow!

  10. tekHedd
    FAIL

    Side effects include...

    Difficult to get optimistic about a new drug until I've heard about the other things it might do. Should I contact my doctor if I attempt suicide, start bleeding internally, or lose the use of one of my limbs?

    (This comment dedicated to CIPRO and the entire flouroquinolone family. Thanks for trying to kill me!)

  11. Neoc

    "...the researchers put one bacterium in a board called an iCube ..."

    Cue Apple's Trademark lawyers in 3... 2... 1...

  12. x 7

    Good to hear someone is finally paying attention to antibiotics again, but what annoys me is the total lack of development of phage treatment. Back in the 1970's the soviet bloc (due to trade embargos) were making a fair degree of progress with this form of antibacterial treatment, but as soon as the iron curtain collapsed, all the eastern bloc drug companies were taken over and their "alternative" development strategies killed off as is threatened the vested interests of the western pharma giants.

    The way that happened has left a development void for the last 20 years in which very promising antibacterial treatments were totally abandoned - not a single products, but a complete whole branch of medicine totally abandoned

  13. Roj Blake Silver badge

    How long until this is available?

    Ten years for further development and human trials, and an additional twenty years while Apple sue them for using an iCube?

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