New class of antibiotics effective against multidrug-resistant bacteria developed

The new class of antibiotics is described this Monday in an article in the scientific journal ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’ (PNAS).

The research was carried out with the support of the European project ENABLE, led by Uppsala University and the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, which together with more than fifty European partners from academia and industry, combine resources and knowledge to advance the development of antibiotics against multidrug-resistant drugs. batteries.

Antibiotics are the foundation of modern medicine and, over the last century, they have dramatically improved the lives of people around the world.

Humans depend on them to treat or prevent bacterial infections, to reduce the risk of infection in cancer treatments, in invasive surgical interventions, in transplants and in premature mothers and babies, among many other uses.

However, the global rise in antibiotic resistance increasingly threatens their effectiveness. To ensure access to effective antibiotics in the future, it is urgent to find new compounds.

The consortium, led by Uppsala University, has developed a new type of antibiotics that target the LpxH protein, which Gram-negative bacteria use to generate the outer membrane that protects them from the environment and also from some antibiotics such as penicillin.

Not all bacteria produce this layer, but those that do include organisms that the World Health Organization (WHO) has identified as most critical for developing new treatments, including Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae, which are resistant to available antibiotics. .

The team showed that this new class of antibiotics is highly active against multidrug-resistant bacteria and can treat bloodstream infections in mice, demonstrating its potential.

And as this class of compounds is completely new and the LpxH protein has not yet been explored as a target for antibiotics, there is no pre-existing resistance to this class of compounds, the authors highlight.

The team cautioned that although the current results are very promising, considerable additional work will be needed before these compounds are ready for clinical trials.

The work to discover and develop this new class of antibiotics was supported by the ENABLE project, in which Uppsala University and pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, together with more than fifty European partners from academia and industry, pool resources and expertise to advance development. of antibiotics against the main Gram-negative bacteria, such as E. coli, K. pneumoniae, P. aeruginosa and A. baumannii.