Researchers from Sirius University have created functional molecules that increase the sensitivity of bacteria to antibiotics. socialbites.ca was told about this by the press service of the national project “Science and Universities”.
The widespread use of antibiotics in healthcare and agriculture has led to a crisis situation with the emergence of antibiotic-resistant forms of bacteria. Today this is one of the most serious global threats to the effective treatment of bacterial infections, which scientists around the world are trying to solve.
Scientists at Sirius University have proposed a new approach to combat this problem. Instead of a new antibiotic, scientists have developed a booster compound that increases the effect of many antibiotics used in clinical practice.
Thus, the resulting product can increase the effectiveness of existing antibiotics against multidrug-resistant pathogens and prevent the spread of antibiotic resistance.
The molecules block pathogen defense systems against various antibiotics. Such a system produces hydrogen sulfide (H2S), which protects bacteria against oxidative stress. The key enzyme by which bacteria produce H2S is cystathionine-γ-lyase (CSE). Disruption of HS biogenesis sensitizes a wide range of pathogens to different classes of bactericidal drugs.
“We did a study on multi-resistant strains of bacteria that are resistant to most known antibiotics. It is these bacteria that cause fatal nosocomial infections, which can lead to the development of sepsis, for example. And the addition of a bCSE inhibitor caused the antibiotics to start working again and kill the pathogens. The bCSE inhibitors showed that bacterial tolerance to the antibiotics increased.” the ability to overcome it opens up the possibility of using a combination of antibiotics and developed molecules for the treatment of infectious diseases,” Anastasia Golovina, an expert at the Scientific Center for Translational Medicine, told socialbites.ca.
In the near future, the scientific group will examine the effectiveness of the new enhancers in mouse models of sepsis, pneumonia, and wound infection.
Previously, scientists for the first time was created Safe chemotherapy against superbugs.