New Antibiotics Treat Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis
New Antibiotics Treat Drug Resistant Tuberculosis A new class of antibiotics discovered by scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn, may assist global efforts to reduce the spread of drug resistant tuberculosis (TB). Created by altering the
New Antibiotics Treat Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis
A new class of antibiotics discovered by scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn, may assist global efforts to reduce the spread of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB). Created by altering the chemical structure of an existing antibiotic, the new drugs—called spectinamides—reduced levels of bacteria in the lungs of mice, and without serious side effects. The team’s paper, “Spectinamides: A New Class of Semisynthetic Antituberculosis Agents that Overcome Native Drug Efflux,” was published in the January issue of Nature Medicine.
Spectinamides disrupt ribosomes, the part of the cell that is responsible for protein synthesis, by binding to a particular site that is not shared by other TB drugs. This allows the drug to be used in combination with additional medications, which is important when battling drug-resistant TB.
The study’s corresponding author, Richard Lee, PhD, a faculty member of the St. Jude Department of Chemical Biology and Therapeutics, expressed hope that the new drugs will prove “more effective against TB [than current antibiotics] and offer a faster route to a cure, and with fewer side effects.”
With the goal of identifying new multi-drug regimens that will be tested on patients with drug-resistant TB, researchers are now testing the interaction of spectinamides with existing TB drugs. According to the World Health Organization, TB kills 1.3 million people and sickens an additional 8.6 million worldwide each year. The increase in drug-resistant strains of TB has made the treatment and containment of this deadly infectious disease more difficult.
Hygiene Connection E-Newsletter
February 2014
