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Canadian scientists have identified antibiotics with a unique, previously unknown effect – corbomycin and complestatin. At a time when about 700 die each year from superbugs. people, this discovery is of colossal importance.
According to specialists, if nothing is done to stop the increase in the number of superbugs, global deaths from drug-resistant infections may increase out of currently estimated 700 thousand annually up to 10 million annually by 2050. Not surprisingly, the discovery of each new antibiotic electrifies the scientific world.
Korbomycin and Complestatin are antibiotics that can fight superbugs. The discovery was announced by scientists from the McMaster University and the University of Montreal in the pages of the prestigious journal “Nature”.
The end of the antibiotic crisis is getting closer
The medical world is struggling with the growing problem of bacteria that have become resistant to antibiotics (the so-called superbugs). Pharmaceutical companies are withdrawing from the production of this type of drugs, and diseases that have so far been successfully treated with antibiotics (e.g. gonorrhea) are again becoming a challenge for doctors.
Overcoming the ongoing antibiotic crisis requires finding compounds with mechanisms of action that can treat infections caused by drug-resistant microbes. Good news comes from Canada, where it has just been discovered new antibiotics from the glycopeptide familywhich are produced by bacteria living in the soil. They attack other bacteria in a completely different way than previously known drugs. So they may prove very promising in the fight against antimicrobial resistance, says a study published in the journal Nature.
Korbomycin and complestatin for staphylococcus aureus
Talking about korbomycin (the. corbomycin) i complestatynia (complestatin), which – as it turned out – can block the functions of the cell walls of bacteria, thus preventing them from growing and multiplying by division.
– Antibiotics like penicillin kill bacteria by preventing the synthesis of the cell wall, and the antibiotics we found work basically the opposite – they prevent wall breakdown, which is crucial for cell division. For a cell to develop, it must divide and expand. If the wall functions are completely blocked, she will be trapped and unable to expand, explains Beth Culp, a PhD student at McMaster University.
Researchers from McMaster University and the University of Montreal conducted antibiotic tests on mice. They have shown that they are effective against staphylococcus aureus, a bacterium that causes many diseases in humans, such as inflammation of the lungs, meninges and the heart muscle. Several Staphylococcus aureus strains show resistance or reduced sensitivity to methicillin and vancomycin. This is called superbugs.
The team led by prof. Gerry Wright of the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences and the David Braley Center for Antibiotic Discovery at McMaster University, says that glycopeptides may include other antibiotics with the same mechanism of action.
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