“This is really important because drug-resistant bacteria are a global health problem. Many current antibiotics are becoming useless, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths each year.”
Their findings provide opportunities for developing new drugs to kill superbugs by bringing down their defensive walls rather than attacking the bacteria themselves. It means that in future, bacteria may not develop drug-resistance at all.
Dame Sally Davies - the UK’s Chief Medical Officer - and the World Health Organization have both this year warned that antibiotic-resistance in superbugs is spreading rapidly. The alarming consequence is that many common infections which have been treatable for decades will once again cause serious illness or even death. Many routine surgical procedures such as hip replacement will become very risky.
A particular class of bacteria (‘Gram-negative bacteria’) is particularly resistant to antibiotics because of the cells’ impermeable lipid-based outer membrane.
Group leader Prof Changjiang Dong, from UEA’s Norwich Medical School, said: “We have identified the path and gate used by the bacteria to transport the barrier building blocks to the outer surface. Importantly, we have demonstrated that the bacteria would die if the gate is locked.”
“This is really important because drug-resistant bacteria are a global health problem. Many current antibiotics are becoming useless, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths each year.”
“The number of super-bugs is increasing at an unexpected rate. This research provides the platform for urgently-needed new generation drugs.”
Prof Dong is a member of a highly significant cluster of over 40 scientists based on the Norwich Research Park who lead research into antibiotics. Their expertise ranges from using modern genetics and genomics to identify novel antibiotics through medicinal chemistry and medical microbiology to public health science.
Professor Anne Osbourn, Director of the recently formed Norwich Research Park Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy Alliance, said:“This is very exciting work that has revealed a previously unidentified target for us to aim at in the development of new drugs to kill this particularly difficult group of infectious Gram negative bacteria.”
“Scientists on the Norwich Research Park have been carrying out world-leading research that underpins the development of many of the antibiotics in use today for over half a century.”
“The critical mass of researchers that we now have in Norwich working on anti-infectives, detection and diagnostics, and novel strategies for the control of infectious diseases spans from microbial genomics through to the clinic. The Norwich Research Park is therefore in an excellent position to carry out the new and innovative science required to combat antimicrobial resistance and to develop the novel treatments the world will require in the future.”
‘Structural basis for outer membrane lipopolysaccharide insertion’ was published in the journal Nature on June 18, 2014.
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