Vancomycin 3.0: 25,000 times more effective with new antibiotics.

Scientists have just made some progress in their fight against drug-resistant bacteria.
3.0 of vancomycin was developed, 25,000 times more potent than the previous generation 2.0, and more likely to kill the strongest pathogens.
the findings have been published in PNAS.
the post-antibiotic era, as more and more pathogens become resistant, there is more and more discussion about the post-antibiotic era.
when antibiotics fail to control or inhibit the growth of bacteria, we call them resistant.
resistant bacteria can multiply even in treatment-grade antibiotic environments, and as they multiply they become more dangerous and pass on resistance to future generations.
drug resistance has long been considered a distant problem, but in recent years the problem has become rather acute.
, for example, there are between 33 million and 106 million new cases per year.
the disease was easy to treat in the past, but not now.
, many doctors believe that gonorrhea will become untreated in the near future, and gonorrhea is not just an isolated case.
World Health Organization lists 12 pathogens that are likely to become immune to any antibiotic.
but scientists have been trying to solve the problem.
2.0 version of vancomycin was developed, U.S. researchers continued to develop version 3.0, and it was extremely powerful.
last line of defense, vancomycin, is an antibiotic used to treat a variety of bacterial infections, usually intravenously.
is often the first line of defense against skin infections, blood infections, bone and joint infections, and meningitis caused by Staphylococcus aureus (VRSA).
but vancomycin is also seen as a last resort.
way to kill bacteria is to prevent bacteria from constructing cell walls and destroying protein fragments of peptides that construct cell walls.
but bacteria also adjust, they no longer use this peptide, but instead turn to vancomycin can not bind to the peptide.
in some cases, these bacteria change so that no antibiotics can kill them, even vancomycin as a last line of defense.
23,000 people die each year from 17 drug-resistant bacterial infections in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
is not yet certain how many deaths have been linked to vancomycin, but globally, improving vancomycin could save a lot of lives.
to make vancomycin stronger, the researchers made all the improvements that other teams showed.
Boger, a chemist at the Scripps Institute, used all methods for vancomycin in the hope of producing a more powerful drug.
's really working.
more methods have been used because pathogens can't cope with everything.
bacteria cannot cope with three separate mechanisms of action at the same time, and even if they find a way to deal with one mechanism, they will still be killed by two other mechanisms, " he said.
boger said, demonstrating a new way to develop antibiotics.
, there are often trial and errors in antibiotic design, and although it is extremely difficult to design in a planned process, it can also yield results.
can we develop widely and continuously available antibiotics as an alternative to limiting antibiotic use and recognizing that resistance cannot be overcome?" said Boger. "Perhaps the drug can overcome the evolution and natural selection that led to resistance, and the drug is not affected by the development of drug resistance, can avoid the common mechanisms of drug resistance, and the effects of the drug can be more durable."
so far, the drug has only been tested in laboratory settings.
researchers are testing the drug in animals and, if all goes well, in humans.
if the effectiveness of the drug is determined, the last line of defense against drug-resistant bacteria in humans will be stronger.
but it's still our last line of defense.
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