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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- A new class of antibiotics is offering treatment hope for some of the worlds deadliest diseases.
Bacterial infectious diseases are responsible for a quarter of deaths worldwide, and many are growing deadlier by developing resistant strains to current antibiotics. However, new hope lies in three recently discovered antibiotic compounds: myxopyronin, corallopyronin, and ripostatin. Scientists say they block RNA polymerase, which contributes to DNA replication and protein synthesis. Specifically, two of the compounds -- myxopyronin and corallopyronin -- were found to be protective against a broad range of diseases.
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For six decades, antibiotics have been our bulwark against bacterial infectious diseases, Richard Ebright, Ph.D., a Howard Hughes Institute investigator at Rutgers University in New Jersey, was quoted as saying. Now, this bulwark is collapsing. There is an urgent need for new antibiotic compounds and practical new targets.
For every major bacterial pathogen, there is a resistant strain to at least one available antibiotic. Some pathogens, like tuberculosis (TB), have strains resistant to all antibiotics. TB is carried by one in three people in the world, but the two effective compounds are giving hope for a new line of defense. When strains are not resistant, the first choice of treatment for TB is a six- to nine-month course of rifamycins. Researchers say the new antibiotics would be powerful enough for the resistant strain and may also reduce treatment to a period of just two weeks.
With a six-month course of therapy for a disease that is largely centered in the third world, the logistical problems of administering therapy over space and time make eradication a nonstarter, Dr. Elbright explained. If there were a two-week course of therapy, the logistics would be manageable, and the disease could be eradicated.
SOURCE: Cell, published online October 16, 2008
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