New Method to Combat Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria

There may be a new tool to help combat antibiotic resistant bacteria. Scientists have developed a revolutionary method to identify and characterize antibiotics. The new discovery could help researchers create new antibiotics to treat bacteria.

Antibiotic resistant bacteria are a huge issue. In fact, antibiotic-resistant strains of Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) were found to cause infections in patients in nearly 200 hospitals in the U.S. alone this March. These outbreaks are often difficult to contain and can be deadly; nearly one-half of patients die from CRE infections since there are no antibiotics to properly treat them.

"We are finally running out of the miracle drugs," said Joseph Pogliano, one of the researchers, in a news release.

This new method, though, could help researchers combat that particular issue. The technique essentially performs an autopsy on bacterial cells. Researchers had to employ both microscopy and quantitative biology tools. This allowed them to understand exactly how molecules work, which is crucial for creating new drugs that target bacteria.

"We had to develop all of the cell biology and quantitative biology methods for generating the data ourselves and that required a lot of work, but now we have the method working, it is very exciting," said Poochit Nonejuie, one of the researchers, in a news release. "My chemistry colleagues can give me a new molecule in the morning, and by the afternoon I can tell them the likely cellular pathways that they target. It's mind blowing how powerful the technology is."

With previous methods, scientists needed to perform many biochemical assays to find out exactly how an antibiotic works. This required a lot of time and relatively large quantities of the compound. Now, though, researchers have a way to find this out without the large amounts of testing.

"Our new method represents the first time that a single test can performed and identify the likely mechanism of action for a new compound," said Pogliano. "It's also faster and can be easily adapted for high-throughput drug discovery efforts."

The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.