- Antibiotic resistance is deemed to be one of the biggest threats to humanity
- The crisis has previously been cited as severe as terrorism and global warming
- But British scientists claim they may have stumbled across a simple way forward
- They have created several of the drugs already – many of which are as potent, or more so, than standard antibiotics
A solution to reverse the worrying antibiotic resistance crisis may have been found by accident.
Deemed to be one of the biggest threats to humanity, the issue has previously been cited as severe as terrorism and global warming.
It is causing usually harmless infections to turn into deadly superbugs that don’t respond to a range of medications.
But Salford University scientists claim they may have stumbled across a very simple way forward – even though they weren’t looking for antibiotics.
And they have created several of the drugs already – many of which are as potent, or more so, than amoxicillin.
Salford University scientists claim they may have stumbled across a very simple way forward – even though they weren’t looking for antibiotics
Study author Professor Michael Lisanti told MailOnline they were looking into ways of inhibiting mitochondria, the ‘powerhouse’ of cells which fuel fatal tumours, when they made the discovery.
‘Like Alexander Fleming’
He said: ‘Like Alexander Fleming, we weren’t even looking for antibiotics, rather researching into new compounds that might be effective against cancer stem cells.
‘This was under our nose. The bottleneck with antibiotic discovery has been that there was no obvious systematic starting point. We may now have one.
‘These broad-spectrum antibiotics were discovered, by simply screening candidates first on mitochondria in cancer cells.
‘Mitochondria and bacteria have a lot in common. We began thinking that if what we found inhibited mitochondria, it would also kill bacteria.’
He added: ‘So, these new anti-cancer agents should also be potential antibiotics.’
How was the discovery made?
The team sorted through 45,000 compounds, using a three-dimensional structure of the mitochondria.
Using it, they identified 800 small molecules which may inhibit mitochondria based on their structural characteristics.
This was then whittled down into the most promising 10 compounds, according to the research published in the journal Oncotarget.
What did they find?
Their results showed that these synthetic compounds – without any additional chemical engineering – inhibited a broad spectrum of five types of common bacteria.
This included Streptococcus, Pseudomonas, E. coli and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). They also killed the pathogenic yeast, Candida albicans.
Dubbed as ‘mito-riboscins’, they are equally, if not more, potent than standard antibiotics, the researchers said.
Post-antibiotic era
The World Health Organization has previously warned that if nothing is done the world was headed for a ‘post-antibiotic’ era.
It said common infections and minor injuries become killers once again without answers to the growing crisis.
Bacteria can develop drug resistance when people take incorrect doses of antibiotics, or are given out unnecessarily.
When the most common antibiotics fail to work, more expensive types must be tried, resulting in longer illness and treatment, often in hospital.