June 18, 2014

expert reaction to two papers on antibiotic-resistant bacteria

Two papers published in Nature reported discovery of an ‘Achilles’ heel’ in defensive barrier which surrounds drug-resistant bacterial cells.

Prof Mark Fielder, Professor of Medical Microbiology at Kingston University and Hon Gen Sec of the Society for Applied Microbiology, said:

“We are facing a difficult era in terms of antibiotic resistance; the need for new efficacious drugs to treat infectious disease is clearly an important issue. The publication of data from the two groups is a welcome piece of news. Their findings give science an insight into some of the structures that are important in the development of a bacterial membrane. This could be of great importance as if we fully understand the workings and construction of structures that help bacteria function as effective entities we can hopefully then exploit weaknesses therein and kill the organism.

“The work reported is at a very early stage but does offer some potentially useful information in the fight against bacterial resistance. What is needed now is the development of a usable inhibitor that can be tested against Gram negative clinical strains of bacteria to see if there is a longer term value to the research published today.”

Prof Brendan Wren, Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said:

“New antibiotics against gram negative bacteria including many hospital superbugs are notoriously difficult to develop and the problem is exacerbated as many of these bacteria are increasingly resistant to currently used antibiotics. The authors have unravelled the structure, architecture and mechanism of transport of a critical surface structure in gram negative bacteria named the lipopolysaccharide. The studies open new avenues to the design a novel class of antibiotics to disarm and kill pathogenic bacteria.”

‘Structural basis for lipopolysaccharide insertion in the bacterial outer membrane’ by Qiao et al. and ‘Structural basis for outer membrane lipopolysaccharide insertion’ by Dong et al. published in Nature on Wednesday 18^th June.

Declared interests

None declared