New agents may revitalise antibiotics to fight superbugs

Anew study suggests it may be possible to fight superbugs with conventional antibiotics by pairing them with a new class of metal-based agents called metallopolymers.

The drug-resistant bacterium MRSA is one of the biggest causes of hospital-acquired infections. Once vulnerable patients acquire MRSA, they can become seriously ill with pneumonia and other potentially fatal conditions. MRSA has evolved several mechanisms of drug resistance. One of the ways it resists conventional antibiotics, like penicillins, cephalosporins and carbapenems, is by producing enzymes that inactivate them. There have been several previous attempts to develop new agents to combat these enzymes, but to date these have not been successful.

However, this new study carried out at the University of South Carolina in the USA; found that several strains of MRSA succumbed to conventional antibiotics when they were paired with a recently discovered class of agent, metal-containing molecules called metallopolymers.The polymer-antibiotic combination avoided the bacterium's defensive enzymes and proceeded to destroy its protective membrane, causing the superbug cell to burst.

The team of researchers, led by ProfessorChuanbing Tang conclude that this discovery could provide a new pathway for designing macromolecular scaffolds to regenerate vitality of conventional antibiotics to kill multidrug-resistant bacteria and superbugs.

The study was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

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