We were at risk of a return to the dark ages in part. Well it would have been very bad not to have help to fight infections.
Scientists create drug to replace antibiotics
November 6 2014
Scientists have developed the first effective alternative to antibiotics in what is being hailed as a significant advance in the fight against drug-resistant infections.
In a small patient trial, the drug was shown to be effective at eradicating the superbug MRSA. Scientists say it is unlikely that the infection could develop resistance against the new treatment, which is already available as a cream for skin infections. Researchers hope to develop a pill or an injectable version of the drug within five years.
Conventional antibiotics are steadily losing their effectiveness at treating infections, prompting David Cameron to warn this year that the rise of drug-resistant superbugs could take medicine “back to the dark ages”.
Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, has predicted an “apocalyptic” scenario in which basic procedures, from hip replacements to chemotherapy, become fatal unless new drugs are rapidly brought on to the market.
About 5,000 deaths in England each year are caused by antibiotic-resistant strains of disease. The last new class of antibiotics was produced in the late 1980s and many experts believe that new approaches are necessary to provide a more lasting solution to the problem of drug resistance.
The latest treatment attacks infections in an entirely different way from conventional drugs and, unlike them, exclusively targets the Staphylococcus bacteria responsible for MRSA, and leaves other microbes unaffected.
Mark Offerhaus, chief executive of the biotechnology company Micreos, which is behind the advance, said that it marked “a new era in the fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria”. “Millions of people stand to benefit,” he said. “That’s very exciting and gratifying.”
The treatment is inspired by naturally occurring viruses that attack bacteria using enzymes called endolysins. It uses a “designer” endolysin, Staphefekt, which the scientists engineered to latch on to the surface of bacteria cells and tear them apart.
Bjorn Herpers, a clinical microbiologist, who tested the drug at the Public Health Laboratory in Kennemerland, the Netherlands, said: “Endolysins exist in nature, but we’ve made a modified version that combines the bit that is best at binding to the bacteria with another bit that is best at killing it. It’s a new molecule designed from fragments that already exist in nature.”
Conventional antibiotics need to reach the inside of the cell to work, and part of the reason they are becoming less effective is that certain strains of bacteria, such as MRSA, have evolved impenetrable membranes. By contrast, endolysins target basic building blocks on the outside of bacterial cells that are unlikely to change as infections genetically mutate over time.
Scientists believe that the results could mark the first of a wave of endolysin-based therapies for infections that conventional drugs are no longer able to treat. About 80 per cent of gonorrhoea infections are resistant to frontline drugs, and multidrug-resistant salmonella, tuberculosis and E. coli are regarded as significant threats. Naturally occuring endolysins can attack all of these diseases, and the challenge is to create stable versions that can be packaged as drugs.
Mark Woolhouse, of the University of Edinburgh, said that scientists had been exploring the idea of endolysin-based therapies for decades: “What’s exciting is that they seem to have made it work,” he said.
The findings, presented yesterday at the conference Antibiotic Alternatives for the New Millennium, in London, showed that in laboratory tests, Staphefekt was effective at killing Staphylococcus bacteria equally well in its normal and drug-resistant (MRSA) forms. In an observational study, the drug was shown to eliminate MRSA in five out of six patients with skin infections. Similar results were found in two further small studies on patients with skin infections linked to eczema, dermatitis and rosacea.
Brendan Wren, an expert in infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “We are all aware that the post-antibiotic apocalypse is upon us, where we won’t be able to use antibiotics because of resistance, and one could argue that this is more acute than concerns such as climate change. We’re so desperate for new alternatives and this one looks like it’s at the leading edge.”
The treatment is licensed as a treatment for skin conditions and scientists predict that it could now be rapidly introduced to hospitals to reduce the risk of MRSA infections spreading between patients.
A three-minute pin-prick blood test for bacterial infections can reduce excessive antibiotic use, a study has found. When doctors used the test, patients took about 22 per cent fewer antibiotics, with no impact on recovery times, researchers from the University of Copenhagen said.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/a ... 259018.ece
