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Australia has created a replacement for antibiotics
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
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Recently, scientists around the world have been concerned that pathogens that cause infectious diseases are becoming increasingly resistant to existing antibiotics. A postgraduate student at an Australian university has tried to remedy the situation by developing a polymer peptide.
Shu Lam, 25, has already tested the new treatment on laboratory rodents. The new polymer has proven effective in combating antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which, according to the UN, are currently a global threat to health. About a million people die each year due to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and experts predict that in about 30 years, 10 times more people will die due to antibacterial resistance.
A young girl, a postgraduate student at the Australian State University, decided to fight the current situation and developed a polymer peptide, which is a structure of similar proteins. During her research, Shu Lam found that the new peptide is capable of fighting various bacteria by destroying cell membranes. According to Lam, the new product destroys 6 dangerous bacteria, and the peptide copes quite well on its own, without additional antibiotics.
The girl also noted that peptides have shown good efficiency in combating various bacterial infections, including diseases caused by bacteria resistant to modern antibiotics. Along with high efficiency, peptides do not harm healthy cells of the body and are generally safer than antibiotics.
Shu Lam wrote about her invention in one of the well-known scientific publications - Nature Microbiology, the development was called SNAPP. As already mentioned, testing of the new drug was conducted only in the laboratory with an animal model, but the fact that the drug can be effective in relation to humans already gives hope that in the near future humanity will not be threatened with death from infectious diseases that were successfully treated a couple of decades ago.
According to Lam's scientific supervisor, the peptides developed by his student are quite large in size, so they are simply not able to penetrate healthy cells; this is what distinguishes Lam's work from the research of other specialists who worked in the same direction.
Experiments showed that pathogens of dangerous diseases died under the influence of the peptide, in addition, subsequent generations of bacteria did not show the ability to resist the proteins that make up the structure of the peptide developed by Lam.
Compared to antibiotics, polymers do not harm healthy cells, while antibiotics act on both bacteria and neighboring healthy cells. Peptides attack only pathogens, penetrating cell membranes and destroying them. According to one of the specialists from another Australian university, Lam’s work shows that there are agents that can fight infectious diseases more effectively and safely. But as Shu Lam herself noted, several years of clinical trials will be needed before polymer peptides can be used to treat people.
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