A group of researchers from the University of Notre Dame, USA, chaired by Mayland Chang and Shahriar Mobashery discovered a new class of antibiotics. These antibiotics can overcome bacteria such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other drug-resistant bacteria that threaten public health.
These findings have been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The new class of antibiotics, oxadiazoles named, was found in silico by computer scanning and is promising for treatment of MRSA infections in mice.
The researchers also monitored approximately 1.2 million of other compounds and found that the oxadiazole inhibit PBP2a, penicillin binding proteins, and cell wall biosynthesis that enables MRSA resistant to other drugs. Oxadiazole also effective when taken orally. This is very important because there is only one antibiotic to which MRSA can be used orally.
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| Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) depicted numerous clumps of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria (MRSA); magnified 2381x. (Picture from: http://www.sciencedaily.com/) |
MRSA has become a global public health problem since the 1960s because of their resistance to antibiotics. In the United States alone, approximately 278 thousand people were hospitalized and 19 thousand of them died due to an infection caused by MRSA.
So far, only three drugs that have proven effective in treating patients. Unfortunately, rejection of each of these drugs also occur.
Researchers at the University of Notre Dame itself has many years of searching for a solution to tackle MRSA. "Professor Mobashery has been in the mechanism of resistance in MRSA for a very long time," said Chang. "When we have to understand the mechanism, we can create a strategy and develop compounds against MRSA," she said. *** [EKA | FROM VARIOUS SOURCES | SCIENCEDAILY]
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